Everything for a Reason

I often wonder at the phrase 'it wasn't meant to be' or 'everything happens for a reason'. While I in my smug cynicism have tended to dismiss such remarks as existential cop outs, they are of undeniable merit. Sure, it makes life easier when we attribute the events in our lives that we don't understand or can't come to terms with to a higher order order or Reason (Logos) – with or without religious undertones – but are they founded at all? Are we arbitrarily less culpable that despite the implications of our actions, we might be exonerated and detached from our fruits since their seeds may have been mysteriously planted by something greater than ourselves? I think it's bogus, yet it helps us make coherent and sensible the world in which we live. Stating that everything happens for a reason is merely biding one's time until one can rationalize that reason, or until one forgets to do so. Failure to do so leads to bitterness and resentment that, without the mechanism of higher planning at work, would most likely dominate our psyches. Nobody questions the mundane things though. Nobody ponders over a glass of spilled soda, wondering what the greater reason behind it could be. We only justify the pivotal happenings in life – the ones that unless explained or made sense of, we arrive at an impasse of how to proceed in the manner that we had previously done. Such an existential impasse is only superseded by direct answers, or the catch-all Reason that directed a given event. Does everything happen for a latent reason? Sure, I'll acquiesce until I come across a better system of reconciling creative happenings in life with their lack ofimmediate justification.