Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Karma
First off, thanks for your comments on yesterday’s post. I appreciate it.
I work in a profession where shit happens. Bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people. Nothing happens for weeks at a time and then all hell breaks loose. Sometimes it seems that every night is a full moon.
I know in my heart that bad things don’t always happen for a reason. Random chance, that’s all it is, and yet it’s hard not to think magically about such things. What did I do to deserve this. Maybe it’s a generalization from the many areas of our personal universe where we did, in fact, do everything possible to deserve what we find at the end of our spoon. Or maybe it’s the same drive that made people concoct gods and religions to explain the random shit in their lives.
In any case, it struck me this morning as I was being called to the ER not 20 minutes before my own doctor’s appointment. Do you know how tough it is for a doctor to find time for a doctor’s appointment? Is Murphy’s Law the god of my universe?
But the ER doc reassured me that my patient was doing fine for the time being, and indeed everything turned out fine, albeit not a fun afternoon for either of us. He’s a cool guy, has known me for several weeks and treats me like family, was genuinely delighted to see me show up in his treatment bay. The kind of guy who responds to, “What, you’re STILL smoking?” with “HELL YEAH!” I’m hoping bad things don’t happen to this particular good person.
Why is it so hard to accept the role chance plays in our world? Things just happen. There isn’t always a reason.
D.
I think we search for reasons so that we can feel like we have some semblance of control in situations where we really don’t have control. Yanno? Instead of something just happening because, well, it happened, we pacify (or berate) ourselves, thinking, “Oh, well, it’s because I did/didn’t do/say/remember XYZ,” or “It’s because he or she did/didn’t do/say/remember XYZ.”
It’s hard to accept that in certain circumstances, there’s diddly/squat that we could have done, preventative or otherwise. And yeah, sometimes that sucks dead bears.
We are pattern-seeking animals. We see pictures in quantum noise, faces in clouds, aliens in the sky. Even knowing that there is no full moon effect, when something weird happens I check the phase.
Humans are weird.
And don’t we love it when someone who has been asking for it gets it?
And counterpoint to Lucie’s comment, don’t you love how we can band together to help someone when bad things happen that they didn’t deserve? Because 99.9999% of us don’t believe the Haitians made a deal with the devil, the whole world pulled together to help them recover. Because we’re biologically driven to see things as fair or unfair, we’re also driven to try to make things fair when they’re blatantly not so. Which I think is pretty awesome.
Interesting points. Which I would ordinarily respond to, except I am the walking dead right now, so . . . interesting points, people.