Does Everything Really Happen for a Reason?

“Everything happens for a reason” is one of those phrases we hear all the time, particularly when life has taken an unexpected turn. Sometimes it brings comfort. Sometimes, looking back, we can see how one event led to another, how a door closing sent us in a completely different direction, or how something we desperately wanted not happening eventually made space for something else. But does everything really happen for a reason?

I’m not sure I believe it does! Because that phrase becomes much harder to sit with when we stop applying it to missed opportunities and changes of direction and start applying it to the really difficult stuff. Grief. Abuse. Illness. Betrayal. Accidents. Losing someone you love. Things that happen to people who absolutely did not deserve them. Did those things really happen for a reason?

I think sometimes, in our need to make sense of life, we confuse reason with meaning. Perhaps some things happen because of choices. Not just the choices that we make, but also those that someone else does. Some come from circumstances we could never have predicted or controlled. And sometimes things happen that simply don’t seem to have an explanation at all. Life can bring extraordinary beauty, but it can also bring experiences we would never have chosen, asked for or wished upon anyone. And perhaps admitting that makes us uncomfortable because we want there to be an order to it all.

We want to believe there’s a great thread running through everything and, if only we could see the whole tapestry, every painful moment would suddenly make sense. Maybe there is. I certainly don’t pretend to know. I believe deeply in things I can’t necessarily explain. I believe in intuition, synchronicity and connection. I’ve experienced moments that have felt far too perfectly aligned to dismiss. I believe there is far more to this existence than what we can see, touch and neatly explain away.

But I can believe all of that without believing that every painful thing was deliberately placed in my path because I needed it. That distinction matters to me. Because something meaningful can grow from an experience without that experience having happened in order to create the meaning. We can survive something we would never have chosen and discover strength we didn’t know we had. We can have our lives completely dismantled and eventually build something different. We can take what happened to us and use it to help someone else. We can learn, change, heal, question, rage and grieve and perhaps uncover parts of ourselves that were there all along, waiting beneath everything we had learned to believe about who we were.

But none of that means we needed to suffer first.

Perhaps that is where our power really lies. Not in convincing ourselves that everything that happens was somehow meant to happen, but in recognising that whatever happens, we still have choices about what comes next. Maybe the reason isn't always waiting there for us to discover. Maybe sometimes we create the meaning ourselves.

So this CHOOSEDAY, I’m curious…

Do you believe everything happens for a reason?

Or do you believe we choose what we do with what happens?