Saying "Everything Happens For a Reason" makes you look like an idiot
What It’s Supposed To Mean
All this suffering is part of a cosmically divine plan.
Why I Hate It
I suppose this cliche wouldn’t be intolerable if it were merely meant to be taken literally. Everything does happen for a reason. People die young because they get hit by trains or get cancer. People are maimed and disfigured in wars because of bombs. I mean, if that’s all this cliche were trying to convey then it would just be vaguely annoying. You’d assume the speaker were just some mental deficient who says things like “water is wet,” “ice cream is yummy,” or “Tosh is funny.”
But the annoying thing about this phrase is that the speaker believes he/she has some inside track to God or Fate or whatever mystic unseen hand controls the universe. As if there is a power and that power decided there was an actual reason to inflict a newborn baby with Trisomy 18 or have a woman get gang raped. And given the existence of this rational force —that operates only with justification and reason— who are you to question why someone ravaged your wife, or blew apart your son, or took your leg? This cliche insists that either happy endings always exist (“see, they never would have found that tumor, unless they were repairing that machete wound to your abdomen”) or if there is no happy ending for you then your suffering was part of some greater plan that benefited another (“don’t be sad that you were imprisoned for twenty years by a racist jury for a crime you didn’t commit, I mean, think about the valuable lesson you’ve taught us about bias in criminal juries!) I’m not saying all suffering is random and pointless, or that nothing good can ever come out of a bad situation, but the arrogance that comes from the belief that tragic events are always justified as part of a larger plan is just intolerable. I don’t know why bad things happen, but I do know that no one who throws this cliche around knows either. So to everyone keeping this miserable expression alive, please leave people to their misery and save your cliche for yourself the next time you’re walking in the woods and step into a bear trap after getting shot in the eye by a drunken hunter.
Originally seen on Fucking Infertility
