Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

by Kate Bowler

There is no life in general. Each day has been a collection of trivial details—little intimacies and jokes and screw-ups and realizations. My problems can’t be solved by those formulas—those clichés—when my life was never generic to begin with. God may be universal, but I am not.

“I think you meant that we just can’t know. And that our brains fill in all the details, for good or for ill. We want to tell ourselves a story—any story—so we can get back to certainty,” I reply. “You know me! I am so desperate to know what’s going to happen. At least so I can prepare.” “I sound really deep,” he says. “I just need to make it to fifty. I need to make sure that kid is launched. I need to get most of my life done. I need to lock it down.” “But it comes undone. There are so many times in life when we think we have it locked down,” he says. We are quiet again. Plans are made. Plans come apart. New delights or tragedies pop up in their place. And nothing human or divine will map out this life, this life that has been more painful than I could have imagined. More beautiful than I could have imagined. “Right. That’s the secret—don’t skip to the end,”