Everything happens...

How could some silly saying send me into a tailspin?

We were invited out with a large group for a birthday dinner. I was feeling very sorry for myself. It seemed like a good diversion from the downward spiral.

The woman who sat beside me at dinner is a friend, an interesting person, a bit older than I, who stays very active and is very well spoken. Perfect to bring me out of myself. She is fun to be with, one of those people who has the ability to move a conversation along in a light way, usually.

As often happens in a gathering of sixty plus folk, the discussion turned to difficulties associated with aging. After one contributor described an incident that had led to a major turn in an acquaintance's life, my dinner partner turned to me and with a very sincere look that held my eyes a bit too long said, just to me,

      "Everything happens for a reason"

and turned back to the conversation.

Wow...

         and I think,

If things happen for a reason,
                                 ...what sort of cosmic joke does that make me?

And I realize  ~ I have never stopped thinking of myself as some sort of freak.

~       ~       ~        ~

Almost a week later, I remembered something Beth and I talked about, that a lot of the sayings and memorable rules we know don't mean what they seem to. One that comes to mind immediately is the commandment:

        "Thou Shalt Not Kill"

If we think of this statement as a fact instead of an instruction, it is saying

         "You will not be able to kill, 

because nobody really ever dies.

 They move on to a different reality beyond our experience."

I realized that in a similar way, 'Everything happens for a reason' can turn into    

          "Everything Happens"

An affirmation of a reality we are rarely aware of unless we are physicists, or spiritual seekers. 

It is a statement of the reality of an infinity of possible futures and pasts, all coexisting in space-time

Aadi's tree of life.

All things do happen, even if we are not aware of any but our own set of 'things'. 

Knowing that at some level I have chosen to be who I am, living these challenges, not just some random victim makes a difference.

It is not the world you see that matters, but how you see the world.