folly

I've been hearing the phrase "everything happens for a reason" a lot lately. For almost a year now, actually; and I just want to clear something up.

Even if a thing happens for a reason (cause=effect), there's not a reason for everything that happens. I mean, there is in the sense that nothing happens without a cause to set it in motion, but the word "reason" implies an order or predestination for a thing to happen.

Case in point: the Titanic. It sank. For good reason. You might say (and some do) that the sinking of the largest ship built to that point was a lesson in humility for human ambition.

I think those people were thinking of this Lady

Whose ambition sent a whole cast of characters to early graves.

There was a reason for all that, though: it was because somebody wrote it that way. It actually is predestined. The Titanic, in hindsight, may have seemed like it was a shoddily made thing, but the circumstances of its fate are great examples of the kind of random convergence that makes life what it is.

What it is is nothing less than our own need to make it make sense.

The Titanic sank because, due to cost-saving initiatives, its bulkheads were built too low to keep water from filling the hull.

Bumblebees can fly because they beat their wings really, really fast (it's science).

Lady Macbeth is a fictional character and not a fair nor an accurate comparison to any real person for any reason.

Reason is something we have at our disposal, to assign as we choose to things that happen. Or not.
I don't always need to make sense of things. I usually like to learn from experience, but honestly: I've seen so many things that make no sense whatever that I wonder if reason is really the best tool for being at peace with life when things don't go the way we want. Or even when they do. Maybe especially when they do.