Summary

  1. We invent reasons not because they are true, but because having no reason is psychologically unbearable.
  2. Even if a higher reason exists, it is unknowable, and what is unknowable is unusable.
  3. No one knows the answer, no state is permanent, and change is the only constant. That is the nature of life.
  4. Time is finite, outcomes are uncertain, but the process is entirely yours. Invest there.
  5. Abandon the metaphysical “why” that leads nowhere. Embrace the practical “why” that helps you learn.

The Question

I think at some point we have all wondered, why a certain thing happened in a certain way. Mostly we have this line of enquiry when something bad happens, when we lose something, maybe a person, maybe a job. Interestingly, we never (almost never) ask this question when something good happens (here, good is defined as the thing that you thought would be good at that moment in time). Psychologists have documented this a lot too. We disproportionately seek explanations for negative events. It is called negativity bias: we feel losses more intensely than equivalent gains, and we spend more mental energy trying to explain them. So, I asked myself this question too, and the conclusion I arrived at makes me realise I am more human than anything, and that has a lot to do with this question.

Before I go deep into my conclusion and chain of thought, I wanted to discuss a few things that people settle with in an attempt to answer this question, and why those answers might not make sense.

The Comfortable Narrative: “Everything Happens for a Reason”

I think this is what I have heard the most when something terrible happens to people, either them telling themselves or other people telling them this. I was in fact saying this to a couple of friends when they were going through tough times, and I do remember my mom telling me this when I was going through tough times.

First, let us understand why people even say this in the first place. Humans are “story makers”. We need a coherent story that satisfies us; if one does not exist, that makes us anxious. We want an illusion of coherence, of reasonability, of things being good for us. We construct stories to fit this, or we struggle until we find one.

This is deeply wired into us. When you watch a movie with a loose end, it bothers you. When someone tells you half a story and stops, you feel unsettled. We are wired to seek closure. Now apply that same instinct to something as heavy as losing a person or failing at something you cared deeply about. The pain is already there, but on top of it there is an open narrative with no satisfying ending. That is unbearable for a human mind. So we make one up. We tell ourselves “everything happens for a reason” not because we have evidence for it, but because an unfinished story without meaning is far more painful than a fabricated one with meaning. The story is the painkiller, not the truth.

This reason is just one such thing we tell ourselves to calm ourselves, even though (i) this might not be true, (ii) we have no idea what that reason is, and (iii) there is no proof whatsoever that the reason is aligned with our overall wellbeing.

In short: we invent reasons not because they are true, but because having no reason is psychologically unbearable.

Mechanistic Reasons vs. Higher Reasons

Now, there are problems with this conclusion. The primary one: “what is that reason?” Mechanistically, yes, reasons exist. When I drop an apple, it falls at 9.8 m/s². If I had a car accident, the first-order reason could be that the other person was in the wrong lane, or I could not see them coming. These are mechanistic reasons, and yes, they exist. But this is obvious. People do not refer to these when they say “everything happens for a reason.” What they really mean is “this happened for a good reason,” or “it is a signal from god because this not happening might be best for you.”

The real question is: is there a higher reason for things happening a certain way?

Many people who believe in god would say there is. But then you and I, or in fact any human in this world, do not know that reason. So claiming that the reason is in fact set up to be good for you is nothing more than a superstition.

So we have made one thing clear: even if a higher reason exists, we do not know what it is. I am not saying the reason does not exist. Maybe it does, maybe it does not. But since we can never know it, we can never act on it, and that makes it pragmatically irrelevant. An unknowable reason cannot guide your decisions, cannot comfort you with specifics, and cannot be verified. You cannot build your life around it.

What I am really trying to say is: we do not know why things happen a certain way, and more importantly, we cannot use that unknown reason to make our lives better.

In short: even if a higher reason exists, it is unknowable, and what is unknowable is unusable.

Why It Is Okay Not to Know

But the consoling fact is that no human does, and that is okay. Let me convince you why.

We Are All in This Together

No human knows why things happen a certain way, at least no better than Nth-order reasoning. (First-order: $a = 9.8 \text{ m/s}^2$. Second-order: deriving acceleration from the mass and radius of the earth. Third-order: why the earth is this specific size and radius.) Philosophers call this the infinite regress problem. Every “why” leads to another “why,” and at some point every chain of reasoning hits a wall. Cosmology goes a few steps further than my example, but even it reaches the same wall. No human escapes this.

Permanence of Any State Is Rare

There is no rule that things have to happen in your favour, and no rule that things happen against your favour either.

If there is one thing true about life, it is that permanence of any state is rare. Change is the only constant. The person going through the worst time of their life will not be in that state forever. The person at the peak of their happiness will not stay there either. Look at any human life across enough time: good phases followed by bad ones, bad ones followed by good ones. No state, no matter how intense, lasts. This is not an optimistic claim that “it all balances out equally.” Life is not a fair ledger. Some people genuinely have it harder. But even within the hardest lives, the state keeps changing. Life is never permanently against me and never permanently for me.

You Do Not Have to Know Everything

Something else that was hard to accept but relieving: I am a smaller part of a much larger world, and I do not have to know the answer to all questions. No one does. I do not know many answers in astrophysics, but I know a bit in machine learning. A human is not infinitely knowledgeable. It is okay to not know, especially when no one knows.

In short: no one knows the answer, no state is permanent, and change is the only constant. That is the nature of life.

Take some time to internalise these facts.

What to Do Instead: The Case for Process

Now that we know that we do not know, and that it is okay, what do we do?

Here is how I think about it. The truest thing we spend in life is time. Unlike money or energy, time is strictly finite and completely non-refundable. Every hour spent is an hour gone. And everything you have ever gained, every skill, every relationship, every insight, came from how you spent your time. From the process. The outcome was never fully in your hands. But the process always was.

So if outcomes are not something you control alone, and time is the one resource you are guaranteed to lose, the rational thing is to maximise what you extract from the time you spend. That means focusing on the process. Not because outcomes do not matter, they do, but because the process is the only part of the equation that is truly yours. Asking “why did this happen to me?” spends time on an unknowable question. Asking “what can I learn from this?” spends time on something that returns value.

In short: time is finite, outcomes are uncertain, but the process is entirely yours. Invest there.

The Two Kinds of “Why”

Now, to be clear, I am not saying all “why” questions are useless. There is an important distinction between two kinds of “why.”

The metaphysical “why”: “why did the universe do this to me?”, “why was I meant to suffer this?” That is unknowable, and that is the one we should stop spending time on. The practical “why”: “why did this fail?”, “why did I not get the result I expected?” That is not only useful, it is essential. Reflecting on the reasons within our reach, the first-order, second-order, Nth-order reasons, is exactly how we learn. If I failed an exam, “why was I destined to fail?” leads nowhere. “Why did I fail? Maybe I did not practise enough, maybe I misunderstood the topic” leads to something actionable. The practical “why” is just another way of engaging with the process.

So instead of asking the question we do not know the answer to, ask: “what can I learn from this?”, “what can I do better next time?”, “should I re-evaluate the goal I am after?” These are truly yours, and you can control them.

In short: abandon the metaphysical “why” that leads nowhere. Embrace the practical “why” that helps you learn.

Informed Persistence in an Indifferent World

And here is why all of this matters. The world has no higher force working against you. It is indifferent, not adversarial. No one is keeping score. No cosmic force is trying to keep you at bay. If that is the case, then for any reasonable goal, one where you can try, learn, and try again, each iteration genuinely improves your odds. The world is not resisting you, so learning and adjusting actually works. It is not that willpower alone conquers all. It is that in an indifferent world, informed persistence tilts probability in your favour over time.

This does not apply to everything. Some things are not iterable. You cannot retry being born somewhere else, you cannot force a specific person to love you back, you cannot undo certain moments. But for goals within human capability that allow repeated attempts, like building a skill, finding meaningful work, creating something, finding someone to love you, the math is on your side. Not because the universe is rooting for you, but because nothing is systematically stopping you either.