Sometimes when I'm searching for inspiration I like to go to Soul Pancake. Usually, I'll find a thought or question that'll provoke a response that'll end up being the spark for something.

Today it's this question: Does there have to be a reason for everything?

Is it necessary for everything within a belief system to fundamentally trace back to a creator or a genesis or even a big bang, a huge raison d'etre for everything? Or can we handle the idea that some things might exist independently of an owner and a cause?

I was thinking about this in tandem with this story about a woman who was killed by lightning just minutes before her boyfriend was going to propose to her on a beloved mountaintop.

When something like that, or really nearly any other tragedy, happens, the overwhelming urge is to try to console the person with the thought that there's a reason behind it. That there's a greater good working behind the scenes of the terrible tragedy.

I don't know about that. I mean, I really want to believe in fate and that things happen for a reason and there's a pattern, or at least karma, in the world, but all evidence points to the contrary.

But there's comfort in those concepts, which must by why we keep coming back to them and why our belief systems are built around them. But really, shouldn't there be equal comfort in abandoning those ideas? How free would you feel if you weren't worried about karma biting you in the ass? If we were less concerned with fate would we live more in the moment? Heck, if we just stop analyzing everything for its fit in the patterns we created wouldn't that be liberating?

Of course, it's probably all easier said than done. If you see an old friend it's more fun to think that there's a higher power directing your encounter than to realize that the only direction involved are the ones you both took to that particular destination. That's boring. Meaning is food for thought.

Or maybe fate & karma are more like cliches? We use those concepts to tell a story and tie it up with a neat bow. Maybe without that it'd free us creatively to come up the conclusions we want, patterns be damned?