A lot has happened. They say things happen for a reason. Sometimes I get that and sometimes I just don’t. I think what really happens is we justify what’s going on to help ourselves or often others feel better. When things don’t add up our minds have to do some adjustments. We have to either change what we believe in to match our behavior or we change the behavior to match what we believe. Since there are often events that have nothing to do with our own personal behavior, we then have to find a different way to match up the discrepancy. With this we come up with “things happen for a reason”. Now, if you are a religious person you can fill that discrepancy gap with reasoning from your religion so long as you've passed the phase of anger at your higher power for what happened or for letting it happen. Depending on the type of event, there is also a bargaining phase or a “why!?” phase that you direct towards this higher power. Now for those that are not religious, logical reasoning comes into play to either answer or prevent you from asking such questions. But when such things happen, how often are we really in touch with our logical reasoning anyway? If you have an understanding of how we get flared in such situations, then you know the answer. So the nonreligious individual will ask these questions to no one, but ask them anyway.
Either way, we don’t get answers.
A man passed away recently. Every time I visualize this person, I see his big smile, I hear his quirky jokes, I remember his random “squirrel” moments of sidebars, and see his absolute enjoyment of his life. He had two children and they came first always. He loved the outdoors, I mean really loved biking, rock climbing, sailing, and the like. Then there was his brain, he had a beautiful brain. His intellect was so vivid you could see it without him speaking a word. Lucky for the world, one of his passions was teaching. Lucky for me, I got to bear personal witness to his talent for helping the minds of others develop, but not without a challenge.
At a memorial celebration of his life, I heard numerous people share personal encounters with all these different aspects of his character. You must be a terrific person if you have more than one student from your statistical methods for psychology class come up and say great things about you. It’s been almost two weeks and instead of healing or going through all the “phases of grief” I’m stuck at one, denial. I’m still in disbelief that a person like him could die. Does that mean I think others are more deserving? I don’t know.
Here’s what I do know: people die and it’s never when we’re ready, because honestly who the hell is ready for death, really?
With Love
