Everything Happens for a Reason.Right?

Every thing in life does in fact NOT happen for a reason and there is not always a 
lesson to be learned. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. 
Sometimes life will just not make sense.
~J.V. Manning

The other day I was having a conversation with a friend who is trying to make sense out of something that happened to her a long time ago. She is struggling with putting a rational spin on it in order to come to some form of peace inside herself. Seeing her struggle and twist and turn things over in her mind to no avail was heart wrenching. 

Life can deal some nasty blows to us. We wake up one day and start off thinking good positive thoughts and having a great morning when all of a sudden out of the blue- a phone call, a knock at the door, changes our entire existence. Just like that our world can be turned upside down and we are left with broken pieces of something that not long ago was whole.  We are left lost, confused and shattered. After the initial shock wears off we find ourselves in desperate need to make sense of what has occurred. The Why of it. We know what happened, we know that we need to face it and deal with it. But what we don't know is the how. How do you deal with the bad? How do you find your peace? How do you put it behind you and move on?

Everyone always tells you that you need to just get passed "it". You need to make peace with "it". That you need to just let "it" go. But what no one tells you is how to do this. How do you just let it go? Does not thinking about it work? Does therapy work? Does anger work? They tell you to cry and to talk it out. But talking just makes it real and crying, while cleansing, solves nothing.  We try to make rational sense out of an event that wasn’t rational to begin with. We look for that elusive "reason" everyone says things happen for and make ourselves crazy in the process.

How do you find that reason and that lesson everyone always says things happen for?  

You don't. 

Sometimes a life event will happen that defies reason. That no amount of examining will help you explain.  Some things in life will never make sense because there is NO sense to be had. No cause and effect, no lessons that needed to be learned and there sure as hell will never be a rational reason behind it. It just happened. There is no making sense of it. You face it. You look it square in the eye and remove all the shields and walls you have put up and you face it once and for all. You don't get past it until you confront it and see it for what it is. Then you leave it there. You can't erase the bad, you can't erase the tragic any more then you can make sense of it. It happened. It became part of you the second that it happened and denying its existence, not seeing it for what it is, will never change that.  Visiting it inside your mind over and over will not change the fact that it happened. It will not change the outcome or make it any less painful. But understanding that some things in life will never make sense gives you the power over it, instead of it having power over you.

Sometimes bad happens. Out of the blue and without warning. The whole "everything happens for a reason" phrase is ridiculous. I could spend my whole life searching for reason behind losing my friend to a drunk driver or why the child on the news last night was beaten by his parents and left for dead. I could search high and low for the lesson to be learned in the why bad things happen to good people and the reason behind every life event I have had to face.  But there are times in life when you are never going to be able to make rational sense out of a life even because there is none.  

When I realized the futility of always trying to find “the why”-of trying to make sense out of the senseless, the release I had was astounding. I didn't have to hold on to the hurt anymore. I could let it go. My peace was only elusive because I was holding it at bay while I tried everything I could to find a reason for what happened. Just like my friend who was struggling with her own life event- she couldn't see her way passed it until she realized that the why of it didn't matter. It happened. She didn't deserve it. Nothing she had done in her life warranted this particular lesson. It just happened. Once she realized that no amount of soul searching was going to give her the “reason” or make sense of it, she allowed herself to let go of it. 

She found her peace by not making sense of a senseless life event.

Everything in life does in fact NOT happen for a reason. Sometimes shit happens. You can spend your whole life twisting and turning it over and over in your head. You can spend countless nights staring at the ceiling and countless days lost in it. But the sooner you realize making sense out of a senseless event is impossible, the sooner you will be able to come to peace with it and move on with your life.