Coffee Conversations.

”Can I ask you something?”

Do you think everything happens for a reason? It’s one of those questions people often ask after something difficult. Sometimes it’s offered as comfort or because silence feels too heavy. I’ve been asked that questions more than once. And if I am honest, I don’t really know…

I used to think I had to choose. Either believe that everything was carefully planned or believe that everything was completely random. Now, I wonder if life is a little more complicated than that. Because there are things that happen which I will never call ”meant to be”. People we lose far too soon, dreams that disappear, goodbyes we never wanted to say… I don’t think those things happen because they’re supposed to. I think they happen because life can be wonderfully beautiful….and heartbreakingly unfair. At the same time.

But here’s what I do believe.

I believe we find reasons. Years later and in places we never expected. Not reasons for why something happened, but reasons to keep going because it happened. There’s a difference.

I think about the people I’ve met purely because life took an unexpected turn. The conversations I would never have had. The places I never planned to visit. The parts of myself I don’t know existed until life gently – or sometimes not so gently – introduced me to them. None of those experiences make the difficult moments worthwhile. Nothing could. But they remind me that life has an extraordinary ability to grow something new from the ground we thought would never blood again.

Maybe that’s what people mean. Not that everything happens for a reason, but that we are good at finding meaning afterwards. Like planting flowers where storms once passed. The storm wasn’t necessary, the flowers don’t justify it. But they are beautiful nonetheless. Perhaps that’s one of the quiet miracles of being human. We tell stories, we make sense of things, we carry memories forward. We love again, we laugh again, we make another cup of coffee…

Little by little, life begins to feel like life again.

So… Do I think everything happens for a reason? No. Not everything. But I do believe we can give even our hardest days meaning. And somehow…I think that’s even more hopeful. Because it reminds me that meaning isn’t something we wait to discover. It’s something we gently create. One ordinary day at a time.

What do you think?