i too agree and get it

Best I can ascertain is that sometimes it appeared as if there was a good reason for many of life's little losses that were magnified through the lense of childhood & young adulthood only because something much worse occurred later that could potentially have been tied to the first disappointment.

I believe in my mother's case anyway, she picked up these lines of bs from religion, specifically the Catholic religion.

I actually heard a priest spew the when one door closes, another opens during funeral mass, if you can believe that.

My advice is to take 2 fuckitalls & call in the morning. Lol

Do you now, and with a larger perspective, have some idea of what your Mom was trying to say with those words ..?

Or is it still pretty much just a pile of BS crap and party streamers .. ? Or, as they say - - "Turtles all the way down?"

(but .. either way ... Boy, can we all appreciate that 17 year old screaming out at her Mom - and the world ... With every justification in the world ... )

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

i understood it then

but when my friend was killed i just couldn't hear those words anymore.
(it's been nearly fifty years and i never truly got over the loss of that girl)

One of the things that I remember about my own parent - - was how absolutely enraged she would become when someone tried to pass off the, "It was God's will .." claptrap. Wow !! Did I see some people getting their ears pinned back !!

(actually felt a little sorry ... even while completely agreeing ... knew even back then that they weren't trying ... probably all they had, mamby-pamby and weak kneed as it was ... ) But, still - just wasn't cutting any ice around here !!

My heart goes out to you as you live through that dreadful, and enduring loss.

Grief is such a hard thing to be in. You don't get over it; you get used to it.

life just sucks.

The words we say to the inconsolable matter. Sometimes the words we use and our need to sooth or save a loved one from pain get in the way. Also, at a time when we are consumed by the threats of he who shall not be named your words are a reminder that we have survived some unbelievable circumstances in life to end up here. When I look back at things that I have survived in the past I need to remind myself that I made it through challenges before. Just because I don’t want this monster screwing with our lives it doesn’t mean that I don’t have it in me to suck it up and do the best that I can to survive this. Thank you for sharing this post and if it’s OK I just want to say how sorry I am for the loss of your friend. You were very brave to carry on. Your momma was trying her best. I’m sure she too was frightened to the bone as well. Peace and love to you. Thank you again for this post. 💗💗🙏🏼💐

Placing you at a juncture where you can either give into the world's corruption or fight against it. This is part of the age-old hero's journey, a pattern of growth that humans probably instinctively follow as it has been the subject of storytelling since at least the Epic of Gilgamesh. The stories are needed because the call to heroism is not always answered and requires instruction, especially at the point of despair when there is the least incentive to answer it. When you become the hero, the one who protects innocence from corruption, your success is not assured, the stories only teach us it is possible, but your life will have meaning, which is more than can be said of the lives of certain billionaires who have rejected the call.

Sir Terry wrote fantasy — and he was a deeply wise observer of humanity and its condition. Please bear with me. I’m sorry for the long intro, but without it the quote from the book wouldn’t make as much sense.

On the Discworld, Death is an anthropomorphic personification. He speaks in all caps. He’s been around at least as long as humans have, and as humans have imagined him into being (skeleton, black robes, scythe) he has taken to wondering what we humans really are. He bears us no ill-will — he just has a job to do.

The Hogfather, rather like Santa in that he was once a midwinter solar god whose job description gradually changed into a bringer of gifts for children, drives a sleigh powered by 4 boars: Tusker, Snouter, Gouger, and Rooter. Children leave him pork pies, sherry, and turnips for the pigs. He disappears — he’s dead — the balance of belief is badly out of whack. Death takes up the job for the long Solstice night, and forbids his granddaughter Susan from interfering, knowing that she will. Part of the job can only be done by humans, and she is, mostly.

At the end of the book, the Hogfather has been saved. Susan, exhausted and furious, verbally savages her granddad — and here we come in, you and me and your Mom who loved you even when you were a heartbroken teenager who yelled at her.

🌜🌜🌜
“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."



REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.



"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"



YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.



"So we can believe the big ones?"



YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.



“They're not the same at all!"



YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.



“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"



MY POINT EXACTLY.
🌛🌛🌛

Justice and Mercy and all the things our hearts are breaking for here at the end of December 2024 — we have to imagine them into being, we have to create them ourselves, we have to believe in them before they can become.

And to all a good night.

Be prepared for a long many-stranded story — And I hope you enjoy it as an intro to Pratchett’s Discworld.

Then at a certain point I realized that while I’d been chuckling along at some bit of humor, the bottom would drop out and there would be tears. The bit between Death and Susan gets me every damn time.

The first time I read it was a bust. A friend handed it to me one Christmas and said that I would enjoy it because I was in a grad school Myth program. I never could figure out this supercilious friend, and I ended up reading the surface, mentally checking off boxes. By the time I came back to it several years and several books later, it was a different experience entirely.

Pratchett had a reputation as a humorist from his first 2 Discworld novels, which were light fare, and at some public function (probably a book signing) a bit later in his career a woman said to him that he must be such a jolly soul, and so happy. To that he said later that no, he was a very angry man.

You can see the anger underneath in a scene from Small Gods, where the torturers of the Inquisition are taking a tea break — the kettle is heating up on the rack next to the instruments of torture and the tea mugs have, variously, a teddy bear decoration or an inscription to World’s Best Daddy. It’s just a fricking job, right?

It can be kind of breathtaking to know that he sees humanity without any rose-colored glasses whatsoever, but it never gets in the way of the stories — and it never gets in the way of his belief in self-determination. His very best characters, like Sam Vimes of the City Watch, are angry to the bone at the injustice of the world, and have to decide every day to not become what they despise. How the unlikely pair Sam Vimes and Lady Sybil fall in love at 40-ish has always struck me as the best love story I’ve ever read.

A flat world with dragons and wizards is not to everyone’s taste — but my gods, did Pratchett ever see humanity in the whole.

Really love it. The youngster has to answer familiar Pratchett/Gaiman questions: Who are you? Where do your loyalties lie? What is the ground you stand on?

Here’s Adam:

“Adam looked around. He looked down. His face took on an expression of calculated innocence.
There was a moment of conflict.
But Adam was on his own ground.
Always, and ultimately, on his own ground.
He moved one hand around in a blurred half circle.
    ... Aziraphale and Crowley felt the world change.”

Here’s Adam’s human father driving up immediately after:

“There was no noise. There were no cracks. There was just that
where there had been the beginnings of a volcano of Satanic power, there was
just clearing smoke, and a car drawing slowly to a halt, its engine loud in the
evening hush.
    It was an elderly car, but well preserved. Not using Crowley's
method, though, where dents were simply wished away; this car looked like it did,
you knew instinctively, because its owner had spent every weekend for two
decades doing all the things the manual said should be done every weekend.
…… He wore a tie, even on Saturdays.
    Archimedes said that with a long enough lever and a solid enough place to stand, he could move the world.
    He could have stood on Mr. Young.”

I thought it was excellent — very true to the book. What did you think?

Haven’t seen #2 series, but finally saw some trailers and clips, and it looks like it’s good too. Eventually I’ll do it the same way — accept Amazon’s free trial and mark my calendar for when to quit.

good. When you say number two series, not following what you mean?
i just did an amazon free trial. not sure how long you have to wait to do another.

…Good Omens Season 1. When the dvd became available, I bought it.

Season 2 is on beyond the book, and the trailers and snippets I’ve seen online feature Aziraphale and Crowley, not Adam. It’ll be interesting to see where Gaiman goes with it — I know he and Pratchett always planned to write a sequel, but they were both extremely busy writing other things, and then Pratchett ran out of Time…

I now have to go back and re-read Hogfather. Along with some of his other works.

I always find comfort and fun and Sir Terry's militant decency when going through his books.

Oook!

It seems that in my experience that if you look hard enough, you'll find a "reason" to explain circumstances.

In my father's case, he used to say that his (original) family always seemed to have "bad luck". Well, doing some deep genealogical research (including articles on www.newspapers.com), I've found that the "bad luck" could be chalked up to really bad choices and bad judgment.

In some cases, your choices will lead to a certain outcome that could explain "everything happens for a reason". In other cases, pure serendipity.

... not a good REASON in some grand scheme for the better.

In this context, "reason" and "serendipity" are merely our way to make sense of things and find reassurance in a reactive universe over which we have very little control.

What we can control are the decisions we make in charting our course through this perilous world of ours.

When we repeatedly get knocked down, despair can overtake us. Some people find strength in religious faith, and God bless'em if that helps them find peace and reassurance.

But that can require believing that everything happens for a reason. Personally, I reject that as a matter of logic, and want no part of such a cruel God.

We have to find strength not only within ourselves, but also within a community of like-minded people. What little control we do have is greatly enhanced by working together for a better future. Acts of kindness can cause ripples in the fabric of our universe, just as hatred and violence can.

Every day we make decisions, small or large. Free will, to a large extent, determines fate. We have to embrace what is necessary for our own mental and physical health, and work together with others to carry that forward on a larger scale.

Those phrases are there for more than just making us feel better when the universe hurts us, hurts our loved ones, or when it hurts someone we think deserves it. We have the words to remind us that there is a cause-and-effect chain connecting the photons splashing these letters on your retina stretching back to the Big Bang for everything that happens - from the burning of the Library at Alexandria, to the town drunk winning a $1000 scratch-and-sniff lottery ticket on New Year's Eve, to the tragedy of a car accident. Just as you realized as a young adult, those phrases did not bring comfort as they might to a child, but as we mature, some learn the words also contained a truth about the nature of this experience we are all sharing.
After becoming a recovering Catholic, I still find comfort in the words of Julian of Norwich, a 14th-century English mystic, theologian, and anchoress. She said, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” This does not mean we finally enjoy the end of injustice or sigh in relief because reality will no longer hurt us. Only the dead see that, maybe. Rather, the meaning is that, despite the pain of this singular experience, there is also balance and grace interwoven in this chaotic field of cause and effect.

I wanted to add a Thank You to Hekate for the Pratchett reference (I so miss that gentle knight!)

when my mom would say "everything happens for a reason" there was a hint at some universal, cosmic play at work. and there was always an implication that whatever she was commenting on was, perhaps, a good thing in the long run.

(as an example: a broken heart might lead me to finding someone else who was better for me or give me a bit of caution before plunging full steam into another relationship, or to learn to be stronger, or more independent--a good thing in the long run)

btw-- she NEVER said that in reference to my friend that was killed. my mom adored her; there was never a rhyme or reason to explain her murder or ever ever attempt to justify it (something like that can never be justified)--there were no words of comfort or solace for my mother or myself on that front.

And thank you for sharing your story.

A lot of valuable words and thoughts can be found on DU...especially lately.

I remember my neighbor saying after her daughter died in a car accident, whatever the reason was, it wasn't a good one. Her whole perspective changed after that. That may work for minor things but not for tragedies imo.

…other than that it’s a pretty good car.”

On a more seriously note, when people tell me something was meant to be, I ask- meant by whom?

And I am a person of faith, frequently in God, always in probability.

I’m sorry you list your friend so horribly. That’s about how old my friend April and I were when she was shot and killed. There was no sense to be made of it, ever. 💧

..does come around.'

My Wife tells me I shouldn't obsess over Trump (happens for a reason?) because I can't do anything about it. Which is true to a point but my obsession is mostly with not being able to do something about it. I've been waiting on Karma to come around the past 8 years and it's looking less likely than ever.

So, I'm holding on to the idea that a day will come when the decent people of the world are rewarded and the rest of 'em burn in Hell...

...happens for a reason" line, right along with the God's will crap. Apparently some people find comfort in those ideas when something awful happens. I'm not one of them.

No one in my family was murdered, but my 23 yr old younger brother and only sibling died in a scuba diving adventure gone wrong. It was 1978. I was 26. I remember a friend from nursing school saying, "God must have wanted your brother with him really bad." I'm sure she meant it to be helpful. It wasn't. Thanks for nothing, God (in whom I do not believe).

The only reason I have found for heartbreaking events like yours or mine is a bumper sticker I once saw - Shit Happens. Indeed, it does. If a loving God truly existed, he/she/it would not do things like that.

I'm so sorry for your loss of your friend.

I am very sorry about your friend.
But this is something I didn't know I needed, (isn't it how those things work out?)
Thank you.

But what ‘we’ make of any situation. Takes a little internal work. Your Mom was wrong, but not entirely

I enjoyed reading that, you are pretty good.