“Everything happens for a reason,” a proverb taught to me early on by my grandmother after I broke her favorite crystal wine glass. Hot tears ran down my face as I looked at the shards of glass splattered across her hard wood floor. I felt the heavy weight of guilt pressing on me as she consoled me. After a glass of milk and a long talk, she convinced me that me breaking her glass was a part of the grander scheme of life. She convinced me that, perhaps, the shattering of the glass could have prevented something even worse from happening. And I truly believed her. This proverb became the foundation of my being.
Living life thinking that everything is meant to be puts everything in perspective. Ultimately it means believing that every single event, even the most minute, has a deeper meaning and can contribute to how things play out in the long run. It also means believing that when things are bad, there are hidden meanings to them. In essence, it means that one day you may come to learn from the bad episodes and events of your life. Living this way puts problems at ease. Believing that there is a given path and a given set of events that are supposed to play out can always be a comforting feeling during hard times.
So, during my second semester of sophomore year, when I got the call from my mother telling me my grandfather might not make it through the night, I could not help but ask myself why this was happening to us. Losing my grandfather would only produce pure grief. Sitting in Logan airport waiting for my flight to board to return home for his surgery, I wondered if there was any larger meaning behind it, yet I could not come up with any positive outcome. Losing my grandfather would be the absolute worst thing for my family; there would be no lesson learned.
I spent a week in the hospital with my grandpa as he recovered from the surgery he was not expected to survive. A month later, surprisingly enough, I realized that his health scare brought us together as a family. My parents, who have been divorced for five years, barely speak to one another. Still, when my mother reached out to my father, who is a doctor, for help, he arrived within the hour. The worst possible event to take place was also able to put my parents back on speaking terms. There was a beautiful thing that came out of an awful situation.
Survivors of serious illnesses for example, may one day feel as if they have gained a different outlook on life after having experienced such. However, no one deserves to be sick in the first place. A year after I broke her wine glass, my grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimers. My family has not learned any valuable lessons from this; instead we have gotten to watch her completely deteriorate as a person.
But, it is comforting to believe that we all have this given path. We all have this set sequence of events and they all fit intricately with one another like puzzle pieces. When bad things happen, we might stray from our path. Nonetheless, there is always a way to get back on it.
