Ever been in a situation when you knew (I mean, knew) how things would play out? When things would go along as they had been and then, “BAM!” something stopped you in your tracks, made you stop and think, and you had no words for what just happened? When everything that you believed just tilted everything in a completely different direction?
So, I started thinking today. Like most days, I sit at my computer in the comfort of my home and occasionally ponder some great question that seems to have too many answers, depending on how you look at things. (Maybe that is just my inner I-went-to-school-to-be-a-lawyer coming out.) And although I have come to accept that some questions really have no answers, I can’t help but wonder…
And I know that my rational, logical side is coming to the forefront when I start to think like this. Have you ever done that? When you try to make sense of stuff that when you look at, with everything you know, it just doesn’t make sense? What do you do when this happens? Do you dismiss it and pretend it didn’t happen?
I have to say that for most of my life, I believed in coincidences. Things that would happen, but there was no meaning behind it. Like when you turn on the radio and hear one song, and then change the station two more times, and the song is playing on all three stations. When you just were thinking about someone and then you see them. When you feel like you could burst into tears for any reason, and you text your sister to tell her that, and the DJ comes on the radio and asks, “Do you feel like you could just burst into tears right now?” (True story.) THOSE are the kinds of moments I am talking about.
Are those coincidences or part of a bigger plan? There is a quote that reminds me of situations like this and this is why I am a little confused. I am paraphrasing, but it goes a little like this…
“If something keeps showing up in your life, it is meant to be there.” – unknown
And my dilemma runs a little deeper than that too. You see, I don’t believe in coincidences. I believe everything (no matter how small) happens for a reason. And so, if I accept that there is a reason for everything, my brain wants to know the reason. I can’t help it. (Again, this is reasoning part of my mind.)
And so there will be this constant tug-of-war between logic and belief that cannot meld together in any happy medium. You cannot have both — you must only pick one. So which one would you pick? The rational person would define the reason as a makeup of things that logically connect things together in order for it to make sense. And if with the greatest of explanations and queries doesn’t come to a logical conclusion as to the why the event occurred? Then is all logic obsolete? But the person that believes in magic and the unexplained cannot resort to logic to find the why — they simply believe.
But isn’t that the most difficult thing to do? To decide if we should listen to our minds or our hearts? Thus is the conundrum I now face. And although I cannot find a logical reason for it to exist, I also recall the above quote and it becomes a question of what do I believe. Time will work as it does and although an answer (whether full of known reason or not) will some day unfold, for now, I will just…
Michelle A. Homme 2014 ©
