Every year, around the time of our wedding anniversary, Herself and myself have a day out. We deliver Daughter Number Four to her cousins, then go into town for a wander about. We might do some shopping, then we check into a fancy hotel and go for a fancy meal.
The hotel is always the same one, because we like it, but we always try a different restaurant: though they are not that different. Usually in the Dublin 2 area, they are on the pricey side and they have the same sort of clientele. What varies between them – often quite dramatically – is the standard of the food.
Still: if the overpriced dinner proves to be ho-hum, the people-watching, or listening, always delivers. It’s an expensive restaurant on the southside, and everyone acts like they deserve to be there. There are few tourists, usually Americans, couples of various ages on dates (the younger ones looking at their phones), groups of middle-aged men who probably went to school together and groups of middle-aged women with a similar backstory.
In our experience, the groups of women tend to be a bit more boisterous, and more interesting to eavesdrop on. While the men are having “What are you driving now?” conversations, the women are telling each other stories: sometimes funny, dramatic or even harrowing. I can’t tell you in detail what these stories are – myself and Herself do have our own conversations – but the last time we were out, one of them ended her tale with the declaration: “I believe things happen for a reason.”
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I’ve heard this belief expressed before. You may have too. You may even believe it yourself. Lots of people do, from all parts of the country, all genders and socio-economic backgrounds.
On one level, “things happen for a reason” is a statement of the obvious. We live in a causal universe. It gets dark because Earth spins. But it’s not usually meant like that. It can be a religious sentiment: God has a plan for me. But it’s not usually meant like that either: it’s far more woolly and rarely explained; as if using the phrase – “I believe things happen for a reason” – is all you need to know about the person saying it. It implies an optimism, a belief that there is a balancing force in the universe. Your bicycle may have been stolen, but there’s a reason for that – a good reason that will eventually reveal itself.
Because God is keeping score. Just for you.
It’s a comforting notion, of course, and a function of the way our brains are wired. On a basic level, we’re constantly seeking patterns in the events we experience, and on more sophisticated level, we tell ourselves stories about those events. If, a week after your bicycle is stolen, you win 10 grand on the lotto, it’s oh-so tempting to believe those events are mystically connected: an invisible force is on your side. But if, a week after the bicycle theft, your house is burgled, you may feel the invisible force is out to get you. You may wonder what you did to “deserve” it.
[ Yes, we allow our nine-year-old out on her ownOpens in new window ]
You didn’t do anything, in either eventuality. Spoiler alert: it’s all random chance.
But the idea of our lives being vulnerable to such indifferent, capricious forces is difficult to live with. And anyway, the things-happen-for-a-reason people seem to believe in it so fervently, they won’t be swayed by logic, which they can easily dismiss as cynicism.
Plus, there’s also the fact that they are correct. Things do happen for a reason. Ask anyone in Sudan or Gaza. They’ll tell you what the reasons are. And those reasons aren’t anything to do with mystic forces, but how utterly depraved human beings can be.
