Bad things happen. Not to good people or to bad people. They happen to people. Period. While I would like to say that eventually everything that goes around comes around and that in the end we all get what we deserve, I do not believe that is the case. While most clichés bare some semblance of truth, these, I am afraid, are things we tell ourselves to order the world in the face of what assaults our senses. The unimaginable is both real and common. Suffering not only exists, it thrives.
Ultimately, I do not subscribe to a theory of cosmic randomness, but I am a firm believer in the randomness of the world which we inhabit. So let me say it again: bad things happen. They are neither a reflection of our character nor a mark of some predetermined damnation. Pain is not the accounting of the cosmos, some sign that our bill is due. It is pain. Something we feel and experience.
Today my inbox and phone have been flooded with news of suffering. I am not only sharing in the pain of those I love tonight, but feeling it with a primacy and urgency all my own. Yet, in the midst of this, I am also reflecting on a common thread in what are otherwise unconnected traumas: a frightening tendency to ascribe our misfortunes to some fault of our own.
If culpability is ours, so is control. Quite simply, this isn’t the case. We have no real power to prevent the individual dramas of everyday existence. We, alone, can not order the chaos of our lives. We face the challenges before us. We do the best we can. This is all. No more.
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