The Great Plan

 “Everything happens for a reason”

What?

That has to be mankind’s vain effort to make sense of everything that happens around them. To assign a reason for stuff that cant be explained otherwise or just an attempt at scaling down things so that they can be coped with.

Bad philosophy, bad thinking, poor advice. Combine them with a generous dose of ignorance. Thus, we come to the premise of “The Great Plan”.

And nothing can go wrong with it.

But IT HAS and IT WILL.

Nicholas Clairmont said this in Philosophy and Reason, ‘Things don’t happen for a reason. Things happen and a reason is assigned. Occurrence precedes reason. The universe isn’t working in anyone’s favor or against anyone. The vague concept of an interactive universe is silly and sophomoric’.

The amount of random stuff that happens every second is just random. But the human mind is fixated on ideas from an early day itself about how it was all meant to happen. One of the most ridiculous examples of this idea has some real shitty timing. Here is how it goes:

Someone is grieving from the sudden, early, tragic demise of a family member. The random empathizer approaches and them and proffers to say this much; “See, his/her time was up. She/he was called to another place”. But how? Why did that call come in the shape of a drunkard behind a car that ploughed into another human and dragged that body for another 20 meters? Why did that human had to suffer 3 months at the end of pipes that went in and out of that body? “Oh no! You can’t say that! It was all part of the “great plan!”

A family spends their entire life’s earnings on a house, and it goes down along with a land slide. As they sit hunched together and stare into the void, the resident philosopher appears and lays a wise hand on their shoulder; ‘Perhaps it was built on shaky ground. This is a test!’

The sheer chaotic nature of the world around but can be quite an intimidating prospect for the human mind. But to cope, we have to scale things down. There is no such thing as coincidence! There has to be a reason!

But yes; it is consoling, romantic, therapeutic and utterly butterly philosophic to say so. It helps us escape from saying something awkward or unintelligent. When we blame it on “The great plan”, we keep clear of any sort of responsibility and accountability. We are the hapless subjects in a game. A game we know nothing about.

The same goes for some nice stuff too. Meeting someone who you immediately grew fond of, winning a lottery after a job loss, or reclaiming something you lost after many years. We beam and proclaim with tears in our eyes that we knew that it would “one day find me again”.

But I must admit; it feels nice. Except when the shitty stuff happens.