Everything DOESN’T Happen for a Reason
Dispelling the biggest myth of “self help” and “spirituality”
We live in a culture of self-help obsession. Life coaches have sprung up like weeds in the playground of an elementary school, captivating everyone, reminding and reinforcing everyone that at the end of the day, we’re all just overcoming our childhood traumas.
It seems everything that we do is an experiment in finding our youthful pain points, reliving those past traumas, and devising new strategies in our adult lives to overcome our youthful agonies. And only by doing that can we become mature, self-actualized adults.
It’s almost like we’ve set ourselves up for continued chronic failure in each and every aspect of our lives, business, personal relationships, family. Our unconscious minds has have devised these clever and elaborate mazes for us to navigate through like mice. And if there’s cheese somewhere inside, that’s some kind of assurance that sooner or later we will be able to live a happy future by solving these almost intractable problems our past.
Now in essence I’m not opposed to that strategy. There’s kernels of truth to it, just like most elaborate conspiracy theories rely on bits and pieces of information that sound correct. So much so that when you cobble them together, it seems inexorable that the whole story must be true.
Going all the way back to Freud, made more creative by Jung, this idea that a neurosis is our unconscious mind’s attempt to communicate in its own primitive way with our conscious mind to somehow alert us to something that our inner being is dissatisfied with — and the only way that our reptilian unconscious mind can get that message across is to create problems in our everyday life to say, “Hey, stop! What you’re doing is misaligned with who we are as a whole human being. And you need to change course!”
And since our high level cognitive functions, replete with language, logic, thoughtful communication, is not at the disposal of our reptilian unconscious mind, a neurosis erupts. All of a sudden you get the shakes in a business meeting. All of a sudden you find yourself coupling with people who are inappropriate for you. All of a sudden your finances collapse. All of a sudden your family is going through horrible discord.
And yes, I agree. This is a form of the unconscious mind communicating with our conscious selves. And our lives are replete with these types of challenges. And I don’t disagree to throw out that double negative, that this mechanism is what’s fueling it. I see it in my own life, I see it in the lives of those around me. This is a true and often ubiquitous phenomena. We have neuroses in the classical kind of Freudian sense, and there’s a disconnect between our inner selves and our everyday lives, and we’re battling ourselves.
Usually this discord can indeed be traced to how we grew up. Our parents were the most significant people in our lives, whether they were around or not, whether they were conventionally considered good parents or bad, present or absent, plus or minus. They were around and instinctively we are programmed as human beings to model our behaviors, our feelings, our survival strategies around flourishing and even surviving in our own households. That’s what we grew up with. That is the contemporary version of the cave. So yes, don’t get me wrong. I think that all this is completely valid.
Where however, I think the train goes off the tracks is applying this sensibility, this filter to every damn thing that goes on in our lives, and then assigning value judgments to this and influencing strategies which otherwise would be beneficial to us yet counteract what’s considered the “proper” way of addressing these neuroses and their ostensible solutions.
So let me be more specific. In our lives, we have goals. and these could be business goals, relationship goals. Let’s face it, life is unfair. People can be lazy, manipulative, deceptive, evil. We are all essentially operating with our own best interests in mind, whether we overtly acknowledge and share that truth, or obfuscated lying either to others or ourselves.
Now in no way do I mean to go objectivist Ayn Rand about this stuff, but it just seems patently obvious that everyone more or less is in it for themselves. If people help you, they do so either overtly, implicitly, or explicitly with an eye toward benefiting themselves. I’m not trying to be crass and almost trite and cliched in this idea of universal selfishness, but where I see this obsession with childhood trauma and life coaching and becoming a better person, smack into the brick wall of reality and succeeding in life, is this idea of constantly trying to self-evaluate.
Let me double-click again. You have a goal and you are encountering obstacles in terms of realizing that goal. In order to get anything done in life, you need to partner with people. Any way you look at it to be successful in our society, in the world, you need to influence others to in one form or another bend to your will. Whether you’re a giver or a taker, whether you’re active or passive, this idea of collaboration and cooperation is dictated by that reality that to be successful, you are influencing others one way or another to your benefit.
Now, some people do it by actively appeasing others. They appease others so that others give them attention are responsive to them. Some people take great pride and satisfaction in literally or figuratively getting other people off. I’ve known many people who get tremendous satisfaction from my pleasure, my response mechanism to them, to their generosity, to their satisfaction in satisfying me. So this game can be played in all sorts of ways where people feel self-actualized by actualizing others. And then conversely, individuals take the most pride in other people doing their overt bidding.
What I’m trying to get at here is we paralyze ourselves utterly with a constant checking mechanism of guilt, regret, experimentation, self-doubt, which in turn are often fueled by a system of morality or ethics, this belief that we should be doing the right thing. And when you mash these two together, this feeling that I can’t make the next move without understanding why I’m motivated to do this and how the implications are. simply a sign from the universe that when I was a child, I was mistreated, abused, or in crisis — and then layer on top of that, this notion that everything happens for a reason. There’s this Pollyanna belief that no matter how horrible or arduous or damning a situation is…
See where I’m going with this? It is the universe educating me about the need for continued self-exploration and evaluation and correction with that ultimate goal of the cheese in the maze that if I play this game of correcting myself and checking myself and exploring my childhood, I will be rewarded with… And here I’m not even quite sure what life coaches and counselors and psychologists are hinting at is the key performance indicator for success of this arduous ongoing continuous process. Where is everyone going with this shit? What is the goal?
The other aspect of “everything always happening for a reason” suggests, and again, I think in a completely irrational and erroneous way, that everything always happens for a reason. So no matter how many punches you get in the face, because they’re teaching you things that the ultimate end goal, that Hegelian teleological destination of your own damn life is inexorably leading you to this nirvana state of enlightenment where you overcome your childhood traumas, are at peace with yourself and can then… What? I’m still mystified.
So even if you buy into this entire “everything always happens for a reason” house of cards, I invite anyone reading or listening to leave a comment and tell me what that desired end state actually looks like: Are you in Tibet eating yogurt out of a bowl? Do you see God? Are you at complete peace? Are you then in this state of nirvana able to do… What? Please tell me. I’m not being facetious. I really want to know what that desired end state is all about. Can you even describe it? It seems like an odd mixture of kind of Dewey-esque pragmatism with this esoteric nirvana-seeking transcendence.
I don’t get it. And once again, if you can, please help me out with this because I struggle to reconcile this continuous process of self-improvement with any kind of goal outside of this process of continuous self-improvement. It seems a closed loop. Like what Jung called, I believe, the Uroboros, which is the snake that bites its own tail. Round and round it goes in energy and in tension. And how this percolates into our everyday lives is also confusing and vexing to me and seems contradictory and counterproductive.
Going back to having a goal, my recent goal has been becoming a thought leader of one, which is basically cranking out books, podcasts, blogs, video rants, stand-up comedy routines. I’m experiencing a late life creative renaissance. after finding myself in an accidental marriage with an accidental family. And now you could say, once again, going back to what I’ve been talking about since the beginning of this podcast, that it wasn’t an accident, that my unconscious mind put me in a position to actually find myself having a family, picking up a real career to support them, raising three kids. Finding myself in a position as I am now where it’s about me, not just about them. You can say that this only proves what the life coaches and counselors seem to be intimating for everybody, which is life is overcoming our traumas to become self-actualized.
Sure. As I mentioned before, there’s a tremendous degree of truth to this. But just to be specific, I find myself in this late life wonderful position of effervescing with enthusiasm for creating all sorts of content. Multi-channel as we say in marketing and advertising. Finding all the different tools and channels of self-expression and then unabashedly just going for it, cranking this stuff out. Now, what are my goals? Well, since I find this intrinsically rewarding to do, my goal initially is already being fully satisfied in the sense of just cranking this stuff out. I recently had to get an update to my home Wi-Fi data plan because I cracked a terabyte of uploads last month across all of these channels and I can’t get enough of it.
So, booyah to me. But the deeper aspect of it is that I have been playing a game, I think, for decades, which goes back to when I’m getting at, specifically in this post, which is four decades I felt that my voice and my legitimacy in terms of doing what I love doing now were invalid. That unless I polished the turds of my point of view to the point of scintillating perfection, they were unacceptable for release to the world. I felt that I was always being judged. That whatever I did and whatever I sent out to the world would be a complete, transparent, comprehensive reflection of who I was in total of my sense of self, my history, my destiny, my purpose on this planet. That’s an asphyxiating position to be in.
I was, in a sense, the young playwright Chekhov’s play The Seagull. This individual has a tragic life and a tragic ending because he succumbed to this similar complex, this psychological cluster of feeling that everything he did had to be perfect, that he had to be an innovator that everything that came before was traditional and boring. In order to be legitimate as an artist, as a communicator, he had to destroy everything that came before and demonstrate to the world and thereby himself that he was a revolutionary thinker and worthy ultimately of everyone’s attention.
This is common among young artists. It’s common among young people in general who gravitate toward extreme positions who feel like they need to change the world. Part of the complex here is this feeling that we are the first people on the planet to experience all of the sensations that ostensibly seem unique to us. We are trailblazers, we are revolutionaries. Everything that came before is shit. The vision of perfection is in our mind and we are the first ones, just as we’re the first ones to experience all this stuff, we’re the first ones to revolutionize everything, to turn it around, to transform hell into heaven. We are the agent of societal, political, historical, and personal transformation. And if nothing else, this reinforces that view that we need to overcome childhood traumas in order to grow up. At that singularity between young and old, there’s this feeling that deep down inside we’re not worthy. There’s this feeling that fuels this entire construct that unless we do the superhuman, unless we display these super qualities, we are de facto garbage and not worthy of anyone’s time, let alone our own.
So I buy into that. I understand that and I see it as an impediment. Here’s the whole damn point: Thanks for bearing with me. That’s the exact sensibility that doesn’t seem to stop into adulthood. So you could be this poor character in the Chekhov play when you’re 20 and every artist, every business person, every human goes through this phase, this transition between childhood and adulthood. Where the traumas of childhood are paramount, need to be overcome. There needs to be a catharsis and a release. And if you don’t address them, then they will plague you forever.
But you need to cross that boundary between childhood and adulthood. You need to grow up. And yes, at this point, diving deep, and figuring it out is essentially vital to crossing that boundary. And don’t get me wrong, this can take place when you’re 20, it could take place when you’re 30, 40, 50. Many if not most people never go through this process and I understand the sentiment of trying to explore these traumas and overcome them. But when it becomes central to your life as in and then when you apply that churn and burn to the immediacy and actuality and urgency of your immediate goals right now as an adult, it can be absolutely asphyxiating.
Once again, don’t get me wrong, go for life coaching, go for counseling and help. But I am a firm believer that either in parallel or in substitution of this self-reflection and obsession, you shut the hell up and do stuff. Action, motivation, experimentation. I have been ranting on TikTok and I’ve gotten mixed messages from friends and family and colleagues and they fall into the usual categories that you’d expect. There is the awkward silence like what the hell are you doing? There is the gratuitous compliments like I see what you’re doing and I hope you’re having fun. Then there’s the confused even more awkward comments that ostensibly give me advice on how to either improve them or come to my senses and return to my prior state, the state that they knew me as when I wasn’t effervescing across social media. And the intent here is to, what? Is it to support me, encourage me?
No, it’s an attempt to calm down their own sense of disorientation, their own anxiety induced by the disruption, and for me to return to my prior state of less exposure, less risk, and become embraced back into the tribe of everybody else.
Now I’m not advocating that people should bloviate on social media. I’m merely using my example of my late life transformation as a kind of archetype and counter example for not becoming overwhelmed with self-reflection. Instead of spending my day trying to figure out what my mom and dad might or might not have done to propel me forward or impede me, instead of evaluating and re-evaluating the subtle signs of a universe that in one way or another is trying to communicate with me, I am taking an active role in my own transformation.
The essential elements of this, and here’s my point, are the exact opposite of the advice that I hear from all the many other influencers on social media who are telling people to dive in deep, to self-reflect to try to understand why things are so bad and complicated and confusing and awkward to this general veneer of ostensibly helpful and impactful advice, which is based on the notion that “everything always happens for a reason” — I say everything doesn’t always happen for a reason. And if you believe in the multiverse, then everything always just happens. And it’s up to us to pick our pathway.
So with all due respect, instead of living a life where everything happens for a reason, reverse the process and conclude that nothing is happening unless I make my move. Nobody is going to give me anything that will be supportive or helpful in a way that’s meaningful to me beyond the importance of me taking ownership over the day-to-day actions, the stepping stones, the baby steps that go from where I am to where I want to be.
So whether or not you wanna be a social media influencer, whether or not you wanna start a new business, whether or not you just wanna age into a happy and stable relationship with your partner, and travel the world and have a portfolio large enough, cushy enough for you float through life until you drop, that’s totally up to you. But I am of the notion that the only way to realize these goals is through action.
Now you could counter this by saying, well, unless you really conquer your childhood traumas, you’ll never be able to realize those goals. Well, here’s the other area where I flip that on its head. Is the action contingent on a reaction and the reaction to a reaction, or do you just act? Throw shit against the wall. Take an attitude where you don’t care how other people react and you A/B test your existence from day to day, hour to hour as necessary. Are your actions driving you toward your goal? Short, medium and long. Are you stubborn? Are you relentless? Do you have grit?
Everything does not happen for a reason and you are not guaranteed success. But what is damn sure is that unless you apply yourself in the real world by just doing it, nothing is gonna happen. Every second that you spend ruminating about your past and how so and such person mistreated you or guided you or helped you or hurt you is a second that you’re not spending on your present which will ultimately culminate in the future that you ostensibly desire.
So now it’s a mystery what that cheese is at the center of the maze pontificated by the self-help movement. All I can say is my cheese is finding a way that I can monetize my own bloviation and content creation so that I can do this professionally to the extent that I can support myself enough to just keep creating more content. That’s my goal. I will do it by sharing stories about my childhood. Look at my blogs on Medium, of which many are these self-reflective little ditties. And I’m sure I will unload more blog posts and solo podcasts in the future talking about my many relationship mistakes, talking about my relationship with my parents, which is very strange and has its own unique flavor to it. All of this is cool. All of this is the heart of art and literature. All of this is the good stuff. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about — doing shit.
I’m talking about going for it and I’m talking about doing it, whatever it is you do: start a new business. Launch into a new relationship. Go on that world cruise. Do it devoid of criticism. Do it absent the notion that everything happens for a reason and just do it. It’s like Nike.
So I say, life coach the hell out of yourself. I say, indulge everything that you want to do. But if you are to gain any sense of happiness that’s outside this amorphous notion of what the hell that cheese is supposed to be in the center of the maze, then spend each and every day doing what you love indulge in it completely and realize that our time on this planet is limited.
That precludes spending more than a nanosecond on worrying about what other people are saying and doing, listening to the advice of people who are surrounding themselves with people that you don’t want to associate, doing things that you don’t necessarily want to do and setting the exact counter example to a life that you would otherwise love and a life that you would love living.
And lastly, it’s not about that life happening for a damn reason. It’s about that life being everything that you can make it by taking charge and ownership of the stuff that you love to do and then just doing it.
If childhood traumas and diving deep into your past gives you that innate satisfaction, then go for it. But go for it like it’s a hobby, like you’re streaming stuff on Netflix because the secrets will not be found there. The cheese at the center of the maze is a fiction. The only joy I think that we can get from our lives is moving forward with courage, dignity, grit, and a relentless drive towards self-actualization.
I’m curious what you think. If nothing else, I would just love to trigger an ongoing conversation about what The Good Life is that goes all the way back to the Greeks. And I hardly have answers, but at the very least, short of knowing what exactly I want, I know exactly what I don’t. And if you think about it, that gets you about 90% of the way there.
