To ask your experience of everything happens for a reason?

[Wantswhatnot77]

I have recently experienced a series of unfortunate events and have been frequently been told ‘everything happens for a reason’. At the moment, it doesn’t feel like it, so can I ask any positive ‘everything happens for a reason’ that you’ve experienced?

I’m sorry you’re having a tough time. I guess the saying is formed on the belief that without something happening, you wouldn’t be in the position or the place or the time for something else to happen. Like the butterfly effect. So in that sense, if I reflect on my life I could say that the turbulent break up I’ve experienced in my early 20s, caused me to move to a different city and take up a different job where I met my now DH and had two wonderful kids. The job I took gave me a boost and levelled up my career, I am now earning a great salary and do something I love. I look at my baby losses as terribly upsetting times and I will always remember them and love them, but if I ended up having those children, I wouldn’t have the ones I have now. It’s all about how you interpret what happens next. Hope you’re ok.

It's a completely thoughtless and stupid concept.

To quote from a book whose title I can't remember: "So what's childhood leukaemia for? Not sharing your toys?"

'Everything happens for a reason' assumes there is some kind of highly interventionist benevolent intelligence running the universe. Its makes no sense otherwise. As a Christian I think there IS a fairly interventionist benevolent intelligence running the universe and even I think 'Everything happens for a reason' is bollocks! But I do believe that through God there are opportunities to bring good things out of terrible things. I have had some absolutely horrible things happen to me over the years, and the last year or two have been really really hard on my children and I in a number of ways. But I try to look for the 'good thing' which can grow from the bad things - maturity, empathy, perseverance, resilience, wisdom, getting shaken out of your comfort zone, having to each out for help (not easy for me), new knowledge. The bad things are still there and TBH part of me has no idea why they happened. But I'm not sure I'd want to go back to me or us 2 years ago either? In some ways I would happily edit certain events out of my children's lives. But then I see the maturity and resilience and wisdom they've developed and I'm not sure.

Everything happens for a reason? Yeah because life's fucking shit sometimes. @echt that made me🤭

I don't believe in "karma" or that if a bad thing happens that you deserve that. I do believe there can be good things that arise indirectly from a bad thing. You can't always see the consequences at the time though.

I had a traumatic university experience in year 1 of my degree many years ago and I was unable to stay there to finish my degree. However it meant I spent year 2 and 3 in a different city which would not have otherwise happened. This lead me to my now DH.

I'm sorry you have had a tough time and I hope things get easier for you.

Yes, exactly.

Look, OP, there’s no point in any of us pretending that whatever hard things have been happening to you have only happened in order to unlock some fabulous opportunity — that’s as much deluded wishful thinking as the idea of someone who mistreats someone else being hit with karma by the universe.

But you will recover and move ahead from whatever it is. It might be in a different way to how you imagined.

Long winded but my first pregnancy ended in a horrific missed miscarraige. Totally traumatised me. I fell pregnant very quickly afterwards. Stressful after the first pregnancy but all going well until the 20 week scan. Baby had a fairly severe deformity which would have required having a leg amputated. I was so desperate for a baby, and the medics involved were so positive, i continued with the pregnancy. Sadly, at a scan at 27 weeks we discovered babies heart had stopped. I had to give birth to our stillborn, desperately wanted for son. Fast forward 4 years, another MC later with a baby with triploidy and our perfect daughter arrived. I am the most anxious parent when illnesses land, i literally have no idea how i would have coped with my son and the things he would have had to endure. I can finally look back 10 years later and think his loss happened for a reason.

Although as someone else said - why did i miscarry, why did i grow a son with such a severe deformity and why did i then carry a pregnancy of a baby with triploidy? In my opinion i've never done anything to deserve those tragedies. So i guess really it's just a way of making ourselves feel better really.

I think the intention is providing reassurance that better things are to come. That sometimes happens, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Just like ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. Sometimes it does bring out resilience and strength, sometimes it’s just an awful trauma.
People don’t often know how to show care and these phrases can be an attempt to support. Maybe consider the intention behind the phrase and not the literal meaning.

DH and I both lost our jobs in the same week (1st week of December to add to the trauma). Different companies, I'd been there 23 years, he'd done 15, we expected to retire there, and had young DC at the time.

After 3 very stressful months, I took a short term post that set me on the road to a whole new career that pays better and is more interesting than the old one and DH got a better paid job for a much nicer employer.

I've often taken a "things work out for the best attitude", but I can't find "a reason" DH diedand my sons lost their Dad in their teens.

I think this the case, but they could actually stop at: "I'm so sorry this has happened to you/sorry for your loss".

What they're doing is assigning cause and agency. So unhelpful.

When someone is in these awful situations, then it' s on the "comforters" to give their heads a wobble and actually think before they open their gobs.

And here's the original - Jobs' comforter. Maybe MN should abbreviate it to to JC:

https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199567454.001.0001/acref-9780199567454-e-1004

Losing weight so I can get op ready, on yet another occasion a theatre was calling, totally unbeknown to me.

Changing my mind about a non remote job v’s remote for reasons that are now clear (shiz, when I think back to March did I know what was in the wings?)

Stuck in and to that hospital bed, getting a glimpse of my brothers life for the last decade. All the everyday things as an able bodied person taken for granted.

Can’t decide what pain is now the worst, tooth pain, period pain, back pain, injury pain, anything else.

People going on about people not entitled to be in this country want to have a stay in hospital or have services from people where the jobs they do, no one else wants to do.

Sorry you are going through a rough time.
“Remember that what hurt you yesterday, makes you stronger today”

Hate that saying. It doesn’t. Life is just shit sometimes.

@echt "I think this the case, but they could actually stop at: "I'm so sorry this has happened to you/sorry for your loss"

I agree. I think it's one of those phrases that people trot out without thinking.

It then gets complicated for people who do think! I have known a couple of people who are religious and they do believe it and would apply it to their own illness for example.

There are tons of ways you can interpret this, but generally it's pretty useless and one of those phrases I wish would disappear.

@Wantswhatnot77 I hope things improve for you ASAP 💐

It’s utter bollox and a meaningless platitude that people express when they don’t know what to say. In my opinion.

Positive mindset helps with most things, and this is a trite phrase to help encourage a more positive mindset. The problem is that none of these trite little phrases work in all scenarios. This one means "keep going and there will be more opportunities, some of them even better" can be truncated to "it'll be ok in the end". I like this type of phrase moderated into "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", but that's really not appropriate following life-changing injuries.

I'm sorry things have been shit, and I hope it improves for you.

Haven't read the thread, only OP:
I hate the saying "everything happens for a reason"

It's obviously unhelpful at best.
I do believe that people can recover after problems, there are opportunities to solve problems and that the best solution to a problem often only gets perceived after a series of upsetting things have happened.

So I believe in resilience but not in 'fate'.

I’m sorry you’re having a tough time.

The reason for saying that to someone who is struggling is a deep, subliminal desire to be told to fuck off

Honestly this phrase makes me want to throat punch anyone who offers it up to me these days. The last five years have offered up the deaths of my mother, my DP, and last month my Dad, and an accompanying veritable shitstorm of knock on complications, including debt, losing my home and my business.

I totally get that some things are inevitable and a part of life, and I can deal with that, the messy fallout due to the uneccesary and utterly self centred actions of some people adjacent to the situations not so much.

Perhaps I can see that if my marriage hadn't imploded in utterly Jermy Kylesque fashion, I wouldn't have had 11 years with the love of my life, but that's just about the only time when it seemed something was "meant to be".

When I was newly widowed, I got to a point where I was considering having a T shirt printed to wear that said "Whatever you're about to say, I know you mean well, but don't" because my collection of awkward platitudes was out of control.

I know it's hard for people to know what to say, but I'd rather have a hug, a hand squeeze or just an acknowledging nod.

Another one that makes me feel like going postal is "God only gives us what he knows we can handle". Sadistic bastard is what I want to reply.

But hey ho, love and light, love and light x

Solidarity to anyone going through tough times.

It's just something that thick people say

I hate it plus phrases that are going off the whole it makes you stronger thing. It’s meaningless bullshit.

had cancer last year, very young for what I had, the amount of times I heard those two things, urgh fuck off! It didn’t happen for a reason and I didn’t make me stronger mentally or physically.

It's drivel. As someone who was sexually abused as a very young child I find the phrase repugnant.

When I was 18 my mum lost her job. This meant I couldn’t go to the university of my choice, to study the thing I wanted to do. I had to go to my local uni and study whatever I could get into in clearing. I chose a completely different path and 30 years later, I’m in a job that I love.

Had I gone with my original choice, I would have been on the same course as my husband. We would have met aged 18 and we probably would have hated each other. He was quite laddish and I was full of 18 years old arrogance and had a completely different “type”. Me might have become friends but we certainly wouldn’t have fallen in love. As it was, I moved to the city I wanted to go to university in 10 years later. I met him through online dating, and 25 years later we are married and have an amazing 16 year old daughter.

I was devastated not to be able to go to my uni of choice, but that set me on the path to where I am today and I wouldn’t change a single part of the journey.

Our daughter was born prematurely, and is disabled as a result of that. We had a very difficult introduction to parenting. I went on to advocate for and support women through their NNICU journey. I have wonderful women who are now in my life who I never would have met, and have had many who said I saw them through their bleakest moments and they wouldn’t be where they are without that.

I am knowledgeable and experienced in accessibility issues and have been able to offer this service to clients which increased my employer’s fees and led to my promotion.

I am also a far better person and parent than I would have been without that.

As far as I can tell, every single upset in my life has led me on a path that has improved my life immeasurably. But right at the moment when bad things happened , it was really hard to believe that.

For minor things, people try to cheer you up:
"the seller pulled out, and I lost the house" everything happens for a reason, the house you WILL buy will be a lot better

For serious things, experiencing loss or trauma, it's not helpful but does anyone actually say that if you announce that a relative just died, or you have a cancer diagnostic?

It’s a strange saying, not very accurate. Would be better to just think that everything happens as part of each individuals unique human experience.