DISQUS

Annie Wilson · 10 months ago

Wow - thanks for this and the Longfellow quote especially. I looked up the poem and it is indeed very dark and murky until that last stanza.

I always think that your daily emails come to me for a reason and this one is no different! It's 1 AM here, I can't sleep, I'm spooked and sad and all mixed up about a lot of things. The main thing is that I got laid off two weeks ago and I am doing a trapeze routine with no safety net. But, as the magnet on my fridge says: "Leap and the net will appear."

Yes, I do think things happen for a reason. I think I got laid off for a reason - that I'm going to move on to bigger and better things. I also think I got up just now in the middle of the night and opened up my computer and found that Longfellow quote in there so that I could stop dwelling on the questions and focus on the thing I really need: sleep.

Thanks for everything!

Linda · 10 months ago

I'm in the same position you are -- my company has taken bankrupcy projection and the expected safety net of severance is gone. I expect to be laid off any day now without a safety net.
I think we have a choice on how we relate to any changes, even unwanted surprises. We can cave in and react. Or we can make the decision you have to "move on to bigger and better things." We are the artists of our life. Like you, I'd rather use this as a spring board to something better. I'm also using this as an opportunity to decide what is really important for the next phase of my life. I've chosen this anthem for my next move. It's a song by Josh Groban:
Let me fall
Let me climb
There's a moment when fear
And dreams must collide
Someone I am
Is waiting for courage
The one I want
The one I will become
Will catch me

alligator_kate · 10 months ago

I believe that we co-create our world, and my favorite quotes are from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet:
'We must love the questions themselves, like locked rooms, or letters written in a very foreign tongue.'
And: Something terrible is, in its deepest being, something helpless that wants help from us. So you must not be frightened when a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen, when a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows passes over your hands, and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you. It holds you in its hands. It will not let you fall.'

Something is happening with you, not to you. Lots of power in that.

Karen · 10 months ago

Everything happens for a reason. The reason could be a personal decision made 1 minute before or 10 years before. But every event in my life is predicated by a decision I have made at some point. And quite often decisions I make today are based on ideas of what I want my life to be like tomorrow. Sometimes though, the cumulative effects of all my decisions don't take me to what my ideal of tomorrow is. That is the joy and comfort I take in all I do, make it my best effort and remember as easily as it is bad it could be good and as easily as it is good it could be bad - just make that next decision.

lifecoachsandy · 10 months ago

Yes, I believe that everything happens for a reason. And that we have freedom of choice. Our choices determine our life maps. So, if I have some crisis, I look for the meaning behind it, how I can learn from it, what I am being called to grow from in this moment. It is my life motto and has helped me to move forward instead of staying stuck when crisis strikes. I am thriving!

JulieG · 10 months ago

Similar to alligator_kate above, I believe that, as humans, we have the power to see meaning in all aspects of life. Whether we chose to do so or not is purely up to us. We can ask, "what was the meaning of this event?" or "what was this event meant to teach me?" or "how should this event change me?" If we do, then all things happen for a reason.

colleenoverman · 10 months ago

Yes, absolutely yes. Sometimes I think it just takes time and patience to discover the truth and the reason why. I think it all is happening to call us towards our highest good, our truest selves.

Eleni · 10 months ago

Yes it does. All the time. Why? To learn, to grow, to mature, to appreciate, to obtain wisdom, to become better. As adults we have no recollection of our efforts as babies. No one of us remembers how many times we fell before we actually learn to walk, how many times we tried to communicate with words without any success whatsoever, how many times we made a complete mess while trying to learn to eat with a spoon.... it sounds silly, I know, but place it proportionally... whatever comes our way it is there to help us grow... it is just more complicated than learning to walk.... and far more complicated if we need more than one lessons to learn...

Cobby · 10 months ago

Another very timely question for me. I'm struggling with this concept in my professional life. While I am thankful for having a job in this tough economy, I am an ambitious person and I currently feel like my management is worried about the happiness and success of everyone around me but me. As a result, I'm struggling with letting go. Struggling with whether these things are happening because of some deficiency in me. Struggling to see any rhyme or reason for what's happening in my professional life right now. I too beleive that there are repeating lessons in our lives and that there is something that can be learned from every experience, but I'm struggling to see the lesson and learn from it.

Linda Borland-Fitzgerald · 10 months ago

I believer there is a "Plan" and within that plan there's free choice and Karma. I keep reminding myself, when I am questioning the 'why' of a situation, that I have to TRUST THE PLAN.. it works every time.

Danielle LaPorte · 10 months ago

of course it does

Alison · 10 months ago

I agree.

Acacia · 10 months ago

No. If I believed that, I would have to believe that my mother's ugly, protracted death from cancer was part of some sick twisted "plan." I find it much more comforting to believe that things just happen and we try to learn from them and help each other through them. Is there a "reason" for the horrors in Darfur beyond human evil ? Does some "god" have a plan for those who are suffering?

No. We're on our own, and we just have to help each other.

Jean · 10 months ago

"To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense.Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense." Ayn Rand

Jean · 10 months ago

Acacia, your comment reminds me of something a comedian said (was it Ellen?). As a relative experienced great pain and died someone said to her that God only gives us as much anguish as he knows we can take. So she commented that if she were a weaker person her relative would still be alive, huh? There is no great "reason" for things that happen. They just happen, to our great sadness. So one should not grasp and yearn to figure it out.

Jessica · 10 months ago

I'll never forget...5 years ago (almost to the week, now) I went through the most painful, traumatic break-up a young adult could ever go through. FIrst love, many years, just ripped to shreds by a boy who -- at the time -- had no idea how to go about ending something so delicate and monumental.

I was screaming. Crying. Depressed. Hopeless. Every day. Every.single.day. Life went on but only halfway because my heart wasn't just broken, it was smashed. To bits. A year went by. Another year. The pain ebbed but didn't go away. I wanted this boy back. I asked him in so many ways, I begged God, over and over...please, let us get back together...

I never wished for anything so intensly in my young life. And when it didn't happen, I lost a lot of faith. In Karma. In Fate. In God.

Now. Today. I know why the Universe just couldn't make it happen. I know why and I'm so greatful. I can FINALLY see (although I never thought it would be possible) why that wish didn't come true. And my life has been drastically altered for THE BETTER because of it.

5 years is a long time to wait for an answer, but for me -- it came.

black flight · 10 months ago

for me it was 4 years. and prior to that i always thought "broken heart" was a turn of phrase. oh no. you can feel it break.

glad you got your answer ... 5 years on.

Rick Juliusson · 10 months ago

In retrospect, yes - it's so comforting to justify everything afterward, even though so many different paths could have been taken that would have been equally justifiable. "Oh, we were meant to break up so that I could find my true life partner." If it had worked out with the first one, we'd be saying, "So that's why I didn't have that fling, so I could stay with this true life partner."

Connie · 10 months ago

I love a poem by Robert Frost called "Trial by Existence." It gives an exquisite picture of life before
life and our ability to choose ours and then forget we did as we live it out here on Earth.

Jennywren · 10 months ago

I think our challenges are a mixture of our past decisions and where we are destined to be, our path.

In those harder times I always remember, or am reminded by someone else, "THIS TOO SHALL PASS" and this concerns both those events we consider "Good" & those we consider "Bad".

Think of the worst things that have happened in your life. You survived them and you will this too.

saverqueen · 10 months ago

You know, I used to believe that everything happened for a reason. Now I believe that it is up to us to make what happens meaningful.

Now I feel empowered, as it is up to me, how I handle the challenges that come my way, and it is up to me to find a purpose to life.

Elisabeth · 10 months ago

Stuff happens. It doesn't mean anything.

It is a great gift to be able to take an unpleasant experience and create something from it. But sometimes all there is to do is grieve and go on. And when good stuff happens, enjoy it to the fullest!