Meaningful

I have to recommend Greta Christina's article complaining about the phrase "Everything happens for a reason." I have a somewhat different take on it, but I definitely see where she's coming from. My version would be "Everything that happens has meaning." I prefer this because it does not have the same implication of a grand design. It also need not apply to everyone in the same way. And an event that has meaning to one person may be meaningless to another.

Perhaps more importantly, it avoids the passivity of "Everything happens for a reason." The meaning of an event may not be obvious. It's up to you to find it. It's all the more crucial because failing to find it means that you may miss something further down the line. Looked at this way, "Everything has meaning" is a prescription for paying attention to the things that happen to you. Are some bad events your own fault? There's a lesson in them. Are they unavoidable? Then learn from your own reaction to them. Is a good event because of something you did? Figure out what it was you did!

With this attitude in mind, it could also be phrased "It is possible to learn from everything that happens." Maybe not from the event itself, particularly if it's an event we have no control over, but from our reactions to it and from the way people around us deal with it. It's also important to acknowledge that the event happened. We can't learn from an event if we're in denial about it. As Greta Christina points out, however, we can't learn from it if we assume we never have any control over it, either.