My internet publisher – the illustrious, Arash, wants me to get my stuff into him now before 6:00pm on Sundays – which means I won’t have a bellyful of wine when I write (unless I write on a Saturday Night [and last Night I was too tired from kid stuff to sit at the computer and think]). So, it’s a cold, sober, Sunday Morning musing…
Girlfriend Giti suggested the other day that “everything happens for a reason.” I was quick to pounce on that because I, in turn, believe that “everything happens for the best.” Giti, probably trying to avoid a protracted tirade on my part, then suggested that these twain maxims meant essentially the same thing, and THAT, folks – really got me going…
We all know that SHIT happens! It happens to all of us at any time and at any place. I remember Son Nick becoming hysterical when a pigeon shat on him in Venice. I think people were hiking up on Mt. St. Helens when it blew. People STILL get married. Let’s face it: shit happens. It’s what you do with the shit that is important. If , like Girlfriend Giti, you think that shit happens for a reason – then we must consider a sense of “Fate”; that there is some being working a massive control panel with input into six-and-a-half-billion people that periodically causes people to be shat upon (and some people apparently more than others [and here I dare not mention any names for fear that I may not live to write another essay]). And hence, we all get born into this world to be shit upon, from-time-to-time – so that things happen for a reason. Thank God for a steady hand at the controls.
On-the-other-hand (a classic, 5-paragraph segue) – those of us who believe that things happen-for-the-best – always view the glass as half full. My father used to tell me that if somebody gave me a room full of horseshit – I would spend the rest of my days scouring through the shit just to find the horse, dead-or-alive. And he was quite correct: because obviously, at-one-point-in-time – there was a horse (or horses) in this room, and I used to love horses (until I was thrown by one). So if I finally found a living horse, stuck in it’s own manure – I would have freed it and we could have ridden-off-into-the-sunset. If, however, that sucker had died, shitting itself into a corner – I would have learned a lot about horseshit as I slowly studied the changing constitution of the shit as I got closer to the corpse.
And how does this entitle me to suggest that things-happen-for-the-best, or, that shit happens for the best? Well, firstly, it prevents me from buying any more shitty cars: I now know what I should drive. Having a good sense of shit, I now know when not to listen to people, young and old – when they are talking shit. I certainly know not to listen to anyone in the education or mental health fields – who tells me that they know what they are talking about. And, finally – how about those politicians?
So, My Dear – things don’t really happen for a reason, they happen-for-the-best: because if you can’t take the shit that this Life throws at you, and turn it into fertilizer – you’ll be shit-out-of-luck.