Jay Nesbit is The Pharmacist Wordsmith® and author of Life Well Lived Books©
You did not have to exist. Neither did I. Run the chain of events back far enough, one missed train, one cancelled plan, one conversation that almost didn’t happen, and neither of us would be here at all. And yet, here we are, reading this together. That ought to stop us in our tracks a little more often than it does.
I’ve been sitting with some big questions lately, the kind that sneak up on you while you’re reading a novel about a woman stuck living the same day over and over. Stick with me here, because it’s not really about the book. It’s about something the book got me thinking about, which is the only kind of book worth reading twice in my opinion.
The Question That Won’t Leave Me Alone
How much of who we are, and what happens to us, comes down to choice and free will, and how much comes down to chance and things entirely beyond our control?
Think about your own life for a second:
- The job you ended up in
- The person you married
- The city you live in
- The friends sitting around your table
How much of that did you actually choose, deliberately and with full information, versus how much just sort of happened to you because of timing, circumstance, who you happened to bump into, or some decision you made on a whim at twenty-two that you didn’t think twice about?
I look back at my own life and I’ll be honest, I can’t always tell the difference. Some things felt like choices at the time and look like inevitabilities in hindsight. Other things felt completely out of my hands and turned out to be the best decisions I never technically made.
The Harder Question
Then there’s the version of this that’s less fun at the dinner table but probably more important. Why do some people get hit with accidents, illness, or misfortune, while others seem to sail through relatively untouched?
I don’t think there’s a satisfying answer to this. I’ve heard people reach for things like karma, or fate, or “everything happens for a reason,” and I understand the comfort in that, but I don’t think the universe is actually that tidy.
Misfortune doesn’t seem to be handed out according to merit. It just lands where it lands.
That’s a hard thing to sit with, but I think it’s more honest than pretending otherwise.
The Strangeness of Existing at All
And then there’s the question that’s less about fairness and more about sheer improbability: what are the odds that any of us came to exist at all, as the specific person we are, living the specific life we’re living?
When you actually try to trace it back, the particular set of parents, the particular meeting, the particular timing, all the way down generations, the odds are so small they stop being a number and start being something closer to a miracle. None of us were guaranteed. We are, each of us, an enormous long shot that happened to come in.
What I’m Left With
I don’t have a tidy conclusion to wrap this up with, and honestly, I’m suspicious of anyone who claims they do. But I think there’s something worth doing with these questions, even unanswered:
- They make me a little more forgiving of myself for the things I didn’t choose and couldn’t control
- They make me a little more compassionate toward people whose hardships I’ll never fully understand the cause of
- They make me appreciate, every once in a while, the sheer strangeness of being here at all
So here I am, sitting at this table, having these thoughts, on this particular Tuesday that, as far as I know, is not going to repeat itself tomorrow.
That’s enough philosophy for one sitting. Pour yourself something, and let me know what you think.
