Meditations: Three Mantras I Like

My mother likes to say that ‘everything happens for a reason’ and, honestly, that used to trigger me.

What about things that happen for bad reasons? I understood the idea: everything that had happened, good and bad, had shaped me. But I was at war with myself. I was not happy with who I was. All I could see were wasted years, opportunities not taken, twists and turns leading nowhere. I was stuck in regret.

In another timeline of my life, another version of me made better decisions (like, for example, he’d kissed my teenage crush when invited to her house to “share notes to study for the SAT.” How curious, I’d thought, my writing was barely legible. How could she possibly study with my notebooks? Imagine her disappointment when I gave her my binders and left). That version of myself would also look back at their life and say that it all happened for a reason. And they’d be just as right.

‘Everything happens for a reason’ just seemed like an excuse to make poor decisions and wave off the responsibility.

 
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