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Rule #59. Everything happens for a reason
New beginnings and finish lines. Setbacks and silver linings. Injuries and victories. Celebratory nights and hangover mornings. Life has its ups and downs. There’s good and bad, positive and negative. It’s all important. It all has meaning. Everything happens for a reason.
I’m not waxing poetic about fate, destiny, or predetermination. My goal isn’t to convince you to believe in some particular higher power that will guide your hand and work in mysterious ways to enact a plan for you. I’m not going to try to instill you with my own personal belief system. In fact, religion, creed, or belief system is irrelevant to this. It doesn’t matter if you’re an atheist who doesn’t believe in anything beyond this one physical science-based life. No matter what you believe, everything still happens for a reason.
It’s cause and effect. If something positive happens in your life, something made it occur. If you’re experiencing negative outcomes, you can bet that there is a cause somewhere. It means that when something negative is happening in your life you can, in time, learn something from it.
It seems incredibly obvious. It is incredibly obvious, and yet for some it seems cloaked in mystery. The simplicity is the most powerful aspect of this notion though. Think about it, if everything happens for a reason, all you really have to do is create the right cause and you’ll get the effect that you want. Seriously, most things in life are that simple.
Note that I said that most things are that simple, I did not suggest that they would be easy. You already know that you’re going to face obstacles, and that taking the bad with the good is part of the game. It won’t all work out perfectly, but even when things don’t go right, there are silver linings and lessons to learn, just like we found with our recent trip to Kentucky. Take the good with the bad, accept that things happen for a reason, and keep moving forward.
“Rules for Intrepid Living” is an ongoing weekly article that gives potential guidelines for how we can all live a more adventurous life.