I can't has cheezburger

Despite my consistently saying things like “I don’t judge,” I am remarkably judgmental.  In fact, I’m so judgmental that I’m often looking for new ways to streamline my judgment.  I’d like to share a nice litmus test I’ve discovered works really nicely.

“Everything happens for a reason!”

If ever I hear someone say that, I feel a bit of joy, because that person has just saved me a lot of effort in trying to gauge their intelligence, because I can immediately flag that person as a few pegs less intelligent than previously thought.  Let’s use a nice example situation here:

A: Man, I’m so bummed.

B: How come?

A: I just got laid off from my job.

B: Oh, how sad!  But, everything happens for a reason!

Yes, you dumb bastard, A got laid off because his employer couldn’t afford to keep him.  That’s the freaking reason it happened!

I know it’s just a cliché, but when repeated enough (and it is oft repeated), people start to accept it as fact, and “everything happens for a reason” seems to be a sort of anthem for a backwards relationship between cause and effect and people seem to be completely okay with that.

What’s even worse is that this statement is somehow supposed to give hope.  Even if we were to momentarily reverse the relationship between cause and effect and accept that there is a particular reason that A got fired, and A has some sort of fate going on here, people always seem to imply that this “reason” is something great that’s about to happen to A, like maybe he’ll find some sort of amazing job.

Or maybe he’ll end up being one of those crazies you see on the street.  Maybe that’s the “reason” why he got laid off from his job.  These EHFARers (as I’ll now call them) never seem to consider that this mysterious, elusive reason could be a bad reason.

Now, readers, when something bad happens to you, I’m not saying that there isn’t some hope for great things to start happening for you.  In fact, that pink slip you get in life might just be the inciting incident that leads to a huge breakthrough in your life.  Karen Patterson-Stewart even wrote a book on these “pink slips” you have in life (probably a good read; I never did read it myself, but I listened to her speak and she was awesome).  It may be that some of the greatest things that happen to you wouldn’t have happened without some bad thing happening before.  But those great things weren’t the reason the bad thing happened.

If something bad should happen to you, please embrace it as an opportunity, which is ultimately what the EHFARers are trying to do.  And soon after a bad thing happens to you, you might even get blessed with someone saying those cringe-inducing words to you, thus indicating that you should probably distance yourself mentally from that person.

And truly that is a blessing.

Peace out. Namaste.