Is “Everything Happens For a Reason” Good Advice?
A phrase of comfort or offense?
I grew up with this phrase. To this day, it gives me comfort because of my personal beliefs. But as I’ve come to realize, others could take this horribly, and rightfully so.
Content warning: mentions of sexual assault and trauma
Everything happens for a reason.
You fail a test? You get an internship? Partner broke up with you? Late to work? All for a reason, right? Sometimes it’s obvious, like you didn’t study enough for the test, you’re qualified for the job, you and your partner are incompatible, maybe there was traffic on the highway. Perhaps I’m overthinking, but I still wonder,
And when will I find out?
What’s the reason for failing the test or getting the internship or losing the partner or being late for work, in the long run? What are they gonna do to/for me in the future?
I use that phrase as comfort. It tells me that whatever happened to me, it’s okay. I’ll eventually find out why things went down the way they did. For example, I applied for a competitive internship last summer, and made it to the interview stage. After bombing the interview from nerves, awkwardness, and straight-up difficulty answering some random and unexpected questions, I knew I wasn’t gonna get it. And I was right, but I wasn’t mad. I told myself I didn’t get it for a reason. Thankfully that summer, I saw the reason why. I ended up spending my time working greatly on myself, building skills and healthy self-care habits where I had seriously been lacking in the past. If I got the internship, I wouldn’t have fundamentally grown in the ways that I did.
Regardless of these good reasons why, sometimes I feel like I never find out why.
Nevertheless, I still believed there’s some validity to the statement, and my personal beliefs steer me towards still using it as a comfort phrase. Recently, though, I read someone’s point of view about how this phrase can be incredibly harmful to tell people. This is the example they used:
(Trigger warning: sexual assault)
It downplays serious events. Think about things like sexual assault or worse. No one truly deserves to experience something like this. Imagine trying to comfort someone and saying, “it happened for a reason.” Sounds crazy, right? Whatever the reason for it happening doesn’t really matter in those instances. Telling a survivor something like that might lead them to think they somehow deserved what happened to them, when they absolutely did not. It also invalidates any frustrations they have about it and may make them feel less in control in their life because it makes them feel like they shouldn’t be upset.
This concept applies to any traumatic event, really. If someone were to lose a loved one or experience another horrific event, telling them that it happened for a reason might not be the comforting thing they need to hear in those moments. It’s like applying a gallon of rubbing alcohol on a fresh wound; it’s gonna hurt, sting, and probably isn’t the smartest thing to do when the cut is so new and so deep. Maybe in time, the individual will realize for themselves why the events happened, but it’s not comforting to tell them right off the bat.
Sometimes, they’ll never know why that specific event happened. Then, they’re left to think they should’ve known and they did something wrong or something went wrong because after all, isn’t everything supposed to happen for a reason? So if you never know why, then, what happened there?
I don’t know about you guys, but if someone were to tell me that I lost a loved one “for a reason” or any other variation of “it had to happen” I would lose it. Then again, maybe others would find comfort in knowing they didn’t die in vain. It just depends on the person you’re speaking to, I suppose.
Another approach I think about is the origin of the reason. Is there some higher power that dictates what the “reasons” are? Do they know what’s going on or what’s meant to happen and we’re just kind of living it out?
Or are we in control of every single aspect of our life and whatever happens is just a consequence of our actions?
I suppose this brings about a larger, related discussion of determinism versus free will and secular/religious for another time.
Maybe it’s some mix of both. I’m honestly not sure myself.
I never saw this phrase as a bad thing, and while I certainly don’t think it is, the new level of understanding I have about is just some food for thought. Thanks for reading, and who knows, maybe you came across this article for a reason, hmmm.
Please do leave your thoughts in the comments, I’d love to read what you think!
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