Things do not happen for the best. If they do, it’s luck, and the odds are just as good things happen for the worst. The truth is, things just happen.
What really matters is that humans react, and other factors intervene anyway. If you get fired and find a better job, that doesn’t mean the firing was for the best, for instance; you could have stayed at the first job and gotten a huge promotion.
(Had you not been fired. But you see my point.)
This is a corollary to the axioms that happy endings depend on when the curtain comes down and that whether a situation is good or bad can shift depending on what resources and energy are brought to bear on the matter. Our occupation of Iraq is a disaster, but by pouring billions of dollars and thousands of lives into it, eventually it could wind up being a factor in transforming Earth into a paradise. It may take a billion years, as well, but no one could say our invasion of Iraq wasn’t, ultimately, for the best — even if the same results could have been accomplished a different way. It’s impossible to tell.
Regardless, when someone tells you everything happens for the best, well, it’s bullshit.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I am not sure that going through life with the theme song "shit happens and you have no ability to control it," is really doing you any favors.
Not that you'll go shoot an Arab, my little Camus, but I think the occasional sense that there might be a grand karmic scheme to things isn't all together awful.
Did something, uh, happen?
Yeah, what 3jake asked.
I appreciate the concern readers are showing here and in e-mail, but all I meant to say in this post is that saying “Everything happens for the best” makes no more sense than saying "Everything happens for the worst.”
And, Jake, I’m saying almost exactly the opposite of “you have no ability to control” shit that happens. I can say something empowering and have it come out suicidal, apparently. I admit my mood is dark, but my message, really, was not.
"are we clear, mr. bender?"
Well, good. Glad you're... um, not fired or dead.
Sometimes I wish I had the wisdom to say better things; all the time I wish I had the power to change them too. But I don't have that wisdom or power so what often comes out of my mouth is, well, as you put it and I agree, just bullshit. Sorry, Marc.
I, too, am glad that you got a post out of it... not my intention though.
- M
Post a Comment