Another very deep and philosophical, yet interesting blog

When I was a kid, I did pretty much as I was told, except with regard to religion. In that area, I was always something of a rebel, as I am a firm believer that you can't force religious beliefs upon someone; people have to choose to believe for themselves. So, despite being forced to go to Sunday school for many years and constant pressure from my family, I strayed away from my Catholic upbringing and have developed my own set of beliefs, in which I am very confident. (I think of these beliefs more as spiritual beliefs than religious beliefs)

Among these beliefs has always been the notion that everything that happens, happens for a reason. So, as I was relaxing at my beach (in my new blue beach chair) and listening to Norah Jones yesterday, I began to wonder if maybe the reason that my company ignored my preference to live in a city and stuck me out in the middle of nowhere, is to teach me a valuable lesson: that many times, the things that we think we want, arenft always what are best for us, or that happiness can happen anywhere.

Somehow from there, my thoughts strayed and I began to think about the whole concept of everything happening for a reason, and the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous the whole idea began to seem.

There are currently 6.5 billion people on the planet. The idea that somehow every thought, action, and inaction has been mapped out for these, as well as all past and future generations is a hard pill to swallow. There also is a huge contradiction between each individual having their own free will, and the idea that their destiny has been pre-planned. The two ideas seem to be mutually exclusive. But, even if you can get past these two problems, you have to agree that there seems to be little if any point for such an enormous plan. If [insert your God of choice] has the power to create an entire species and map out its entire existence, why not just skip ahead to the end? Why waste all the time of scripting us to get there ourselves? I hardly can believe that [insert your God of choice] is sitting around somewhere in one of those reclining massage chairs eating Doritos and watching us live out his/her plan, as if the Earth is some sort of eons long Imax movie.

So, I decided that I no longer believe that everything happens for a reason. This lead me to question why so many people believe what seems to me to be such a ridiculous idea, and I have come up with a theory.

In general, people don't like things that they don't understand, making difficult decisions, or accepting responsibility. Well, conveniently, the idea that everything happens for a reason eliminates all three. Take death for example: when we don't understand why someone had to die, we say that it was all part of God's plan and that the Lord works in mysterious ways. When we need to make difficult choices, the idea that everything happens for a reason essentially removes all pressure, since theoretically, whatever choice we make, we were supposed to make. And when someone looses their job, we comfort them by saying that it all happened for a reason, instead of the awful truth: that maybe they deserved to be fired.

I think that this entire concept is one that we created to make ourselves happier.

Therefore, if things don't happen for a reason, then by default, it would appear that things just happen. They are what they are. This means that we should stop making lame ass excuses for things and start accepting responsibility for our choices and actions. If we don't understand things, we should explore them and try to figure them out. And most importantly, we shouldn't waste so much time looking for and assigning non-existent meaning to the past and worrying about finding our purpose in the future. Things happened in the past because we chose to make them happen. And if there is no master plan for our lives, our destinies are ours to create. Just do things that make you happy and let that be your purpose. It's kind of arrogant to begin with to even assume that humans, as one of thousands of species on this planet, are even supposed to have a purpose or anything more than to procreate and fulfill our role in the food chain/ecosystem.

So, I think that we should all just relax. Live in the present; we'll have plenty of time to worry about the future when it gets here. And hold ourselves accountable for our choices, letting both our conscience (it's there for a reason) and our HAPPINESS guide those choices.

What would that be like?

I know that this is probably super boring to read and is probably all covered in day 1 of any philosophy 101 class, but it's interesting to me and I've never taken any philosophy classes. In some ways, I feel a little bit like Julie from the Real World New Orleans...I have tons of time to sit and think, and am questioning and refining my beliefs and opinions daily. (only Julie was 9000 times more dramatic than me. And she cried a lot and was kind of annoying.)

I'm really curious to know what other people think of these ideas, so please let me know.