And Choosing Hope

When something terrible happens to someone you love dearly, who most certainly does not deserve it (or to you for that matter) how do you explain it to yourself? How do you prevent yourself from falling into a nihilistic hellhole? If you are like me and most other human beings, it is probably through the stories you tell yourself about why it happened.

So why does bad stuff happen to good people?

Is the world fair? Is God fair?

If the world and God are fair, well, then victims are responsible for their own victim-hood. *Cringe.

If the world/God are not fair, then…WTF?

There are a number of philosophies about this and they are all pretty complex. Therefore, I’m going to totally butcher all of them by trying to reduce them to one-sentence summaries so that we can look at a big, fun overview of the ways we humans try to make sense of our wild, rather messy house. Er, um, world. Ahem. Wild, messy world.

Grab yourself a nice, contemplative cuppa and here we go.

• God would want to help, but can’t. (God is good but not all-powerful. Or perhaps not all-knowing).
• God could help, but won’t. (God is all-powerful but not all good).
• Everything is orchestrated by God for our learning. (There is no free-will). (This perspective can easily slip into nihilism). 
• God has given us free-will, and thus allows us to create suffering for ourselves and others to facilitate our learning and growth through making choices. In other words, both free will and cause and effect are laws of our universe/earth-side-learning lab. All variations of this one can be powerful as explanations for our own suffering, but victim-blamey when applied as explanations for the suffering of others.
  • Everything is orchestrated by us for our learning. Prior to this life, we agreed to play certain roles, ie. perpetrator and victim, to facilitate our own learning and the learning of others.
  • Everything is orchestrated by God AND us for our learning, as we are actually One.
  • Karma from present and past lives. Also known as cause-and-effect. Also known as a potentially powerful instrument of learning.  (Alert: has been used to oppress the underprivileged and as justification for the caste system.) 
  • We have a limited perspective, and thus don’t understand the higher purpose in our experiences. In other words,  “For now we see through a glass, darkly.” In other-other words, one of us here just doesn’t get it, and it’s not God.
  • Similarly: “Good” and “bad” are part of the limited perspective of the dualistic mind. A beautiful illustration of this concept is found here.
• The Law of Attraction: we “attract” experiences to ourselves via our vibrational energy, which is generated by our thoughts, feelings, and general way of being. High vibes=good stuff happens. Low vibes=bad stuff happens. (Alert: victim blamey). 
  • Alternative, less victim-blamey explanation for starving children in developing countries, etc: It is our collective “low-vibes” or lovelessness that result in bad things happening to good people, rather than those individual children “attracting” starvation through negative thinking, for example. More on this one here.
• Getting Eastern: Without duality/opposition, the relative world ceases to exist. Read: we would be metaphorically Nothingness Floating in Empty Space. Said Nothingness may be Divine, but there’s not much happening. In other words:

Without duality: nothing. With duality: all the many somethings, some of which we like and some of which we abhor.

….That’s a whole blog post in itself. Maybe next week?

And finally, let’s not forget another common philosophy:

• There is no God and bad stuff happens because everything and everyone is just trying to look out for #1. Survival of the fittest, yo. Essentially, the world is not fair. That’s why it seems…not fair.

As for me? I know I don’t know the myriad ways all my circumstances and experiences impact me, others, and the world at large. I could assume it is all completely random and frequently for the worst, but in the absence of knowledge, it could just as well be working together for a greater purpose, so I go with the latter assumption.

And anyways, there’s been a time or two that I’ve had the phenomenological (read: direct experience) realization that everything is perfect as it is, in some way beyond what my thinking mind can comprehend. Thus, if I were forced at gunpoint to guess which assumption is correct, first, that would be weird; and second, I would guess there is a greater purpose at work.

In short, I choose hope*. Because I like it.

***

*And also I realize many people find hope and meaning in the belief that there is no greater order, and we must create meaning ourselves. The best paradigm for you is the best paradigm for you.

**Thanks to the friends and family who contributed their wisdom and thoughts to this post. Not only thanks for contributing, but also thanks for being someone I can talk about these things with. You know who you are!

***

Okay, what explanations/philosophies did I miss? I am sure there are others I haven’t thought of.  What is your favorite? And which ones did I do a terrible job of describing? Please, do them justice in the comments below!

***Image credit here.