We’ve all experienced a painful situation in our lives at a particular time, the loss of a close friend or relative, sacked from your place of work, break up in your relationship or a divorce from your 20years marriage and then you hurt so much and it seems like nothing is going to work out for you. Amidst so much sadness and heartaches, be careful not to fall into the ditch of “Everything happens for a reason”.
Most people look for means to avoid or run from the hurts and pain from ugly situations, they think of ways to avoid the feeling. It’s in ugly situation like this that you get to hear the line from someone who thinks they are sympathizing with you and want you to feel better. But here comes the hard truth, this sentence either makes you angry at both the person and yourself or it takes you away from reality, either way, the outcome is not pleasant.
When you say this phrase, you think it’s actually a very normal response used to console people from their grieve but you have effectively shut down the possibility of encouraging an authentic and maybe helpful dialogue because there are no possible reply to this response, imagine you are told everything happens for a reason by a friend after you tell him of your break up, what would you say?
Trying to conclude about a situation and jump right to that phrase, there was no other way this would have happened and everything happens for a reason, it is definitely not the best way out, the problem is that if we don’t actually explore what has happened, and embrace the pain, grief, sorrow, heartaches as an unavoidable part of human existence you will not totally heal from it.
The phrase “everything happens for a reason” can be understood in different ways and misunderstood even if your intentions were to be of help. Since it’s an effective way of shutting a conversation it can mean “stop complaining, I'm bored”, “I don’t know what else to do so get over it”, “I don't want to help you sort this out”.
No matter your religious background and preferences, who you choose to love or the color of your skin and your beliefs, we must come together and know that we should stop saying the phrase “everything happens for a reason” as the human race. No man deserves to be told a reason for a tragedy he just suffered. People were not created to deserve tragedy in their lives.
We shouldn’t try to understand why, nor try to make sense of the pain because trying to make sense of a situation that is beyond your control will result in nothing at the end and then phrases like this are spoken. It is much better to sympathize with those affected, mourn with them and sit with them in their darkest hour. This can go a long way in bringing them back to see the light.
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