It's meant to be a comforting statement: "everything happens for a reason." Or it's counterpart, which is "it must be meant to be." Rather than comfort, these phrases bring me anxiety. Call me a freak, I don't know. I think it's the lack of control and passivity implicit in those words that I don't embrace. There are subtleties about "letting go" that I just haven't gotten yet. (I'm sure there's a reason that I haven't gotten it yet....but I digress.)
"Everything happens for a reason." Ok, but not knowing the reason makes me half crazy. Am I supposed to try to figure it out, or not? I'm confused. If there is a reason and I don't know it (at that moment in time) there may as well be no reason. I still sit in anxiety.
What does bring me peace is flipping the phrase. How about: "whatever happens, we can find meaning in." I can accept that things happen because things happen. And we can create our own reasons for how or why things happened that support and empower us. Alternately, we can create our own reasons for why things happened that hurt and dis-empower us.
Basically, nothing happened today. At least not with the issue at hand, which is my mother's discharge disposition from the geri-psych unit. The meaning I take from this is that when it's out of my control, nothing makes a difference - I might as well be at peace. I spent half the day frantically trying to make something happen, and the other half anxiously waiting for something to happen, and the end result was the same: nothing happened.
With all the uncertainty of what lies ahead, for both my mother and me, we'll find meaning in it. She'll find a way to be happy (in some weird way, she always does), and I'll find joy in her good days. If she can still find a way to be happy, surely I can slow down and enjoy the moments of my life as they unfold. Whether there is reason or not, I can be at peace.
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