Is “Everything Happens for a Reason” Just a Lie We Tell Each Other to Make Ourselves Feel Better?

They say everything happens for a reason — as if that one sentence can hold the weight of heartbreak, loss, and unanswered prayers.

But I’ve always wondered if maybe that phrase is just something we whisper when we can’t make sense of the wreckage.

When we need to find a reason not to fall apart.

When we’re searching for meaning in the mess.

Because truthfully, sometimes things just happen.

The car hits. The phone rings. The diagnosis comes.

The person you thought would never leave… leaves.

And no divine reasoning steps forward to explain why.

Maybe it’s not all fate.

Maybe it’s just life — unfiltered, unpredictable, and unfair.

Maybe the reason is something we create later, when we’re ready to rebuild from the pieces.

Maybe “everything happens for a reason” isn’t a cosmic truth… but a survival mechanism.

A story we tell ourselves so we don’t give up.

I’ve lived long enough to know that not every scar comes with a lesson right away.

Sometimes, the reason doesn’t show up for years.

And sometimes — let’s be honest — there is no reason that could ever make the pain make sense.

But I’ve also learned that even if there isn’t a reason, there can still be a becoming.

The way tragedy cracks us open, forcing us to meet the parts of ourselves we never knew existed.

The way survival rewires us, gives us softer eyes and stronger bones.

The way we start walking again — differently, maybe limping — but walking still.

Maybe that’s the real meaning. Not the reason. The resilience.

Maybe the phrase should be rewritten:

“Everything that happens can become something if you let it.”

We don’t always get to choose the pain, but we do get to choose what we build from it.

And in that choice — in that stubborn, beautiful act of creating meaning out of madness —

we become our own reason.

Is “Everything Happens for a Reason” Just a Lie We Tell Each Other to Make Ourselves Feel Better?

There are a few sentences people throw around like emotional band-aids.

“Time heals all wounds.”

“What’s meant for you won’t pass you.”

And the ever-so-popular, “Everything happens for a reason.”

It rolls off the tongue like a prayer and lands like a sigh — soft, hopeful, maybe even comforting.

But deep down, part of me has always wondered: is it true?

Or is it just a beautiful lie we tell ourselves when life doesn’t make sense?

When There’s No Reason Big Enough

When I was lying in that hospital bed after the crash — bones shattered, face reconstructed, leg screaming in ways I didn’t know nerves could — someone whispered that same line to me.

“Everything happens for a reason.”

And I remember blinking up at them, too tired to argue, but inside I thought: Tell me the reason then.

Tell me the reason why my life was split in half on a random afternoon.

Why I went from running in stilettos to learning to walk in sneakers again.

Why every mirror after that reflected a face I had to relearn how to love.

What possible divine plan could justify this much pain?

For years, I tried to force meaning into the story — because people need stories to survive.

We crave explanations that make chaos make sense.

So I told myself, maybe this happened to slow me down. Maybe to humble me. Maybe to wake me up.

But sometimes, the truth is simpler — and harder.

Maybe it just happened.

Maybe it wasn’t a lesson wrapped in tragedy, but just tragedy itself.

The Search for Meaning

When everything you thought you knew about your life collapses, you start to bargain with the universe.

You try to find logic in loss.

We say things like “everything happens for a reason” because we need to believe there’s something on the other side of the suffering.

And maybe that belief — even if it’s not objectively true — saves us.

Because the alternative feels unbearable: to think the pain was random, pointless, cruel.

To think the crash, the heartbreak, the diagnosis, the betrayal — all just senseless events in a world with no grand design.

So we create reason.

We sculpt it out of survival.

We breathe life into the rubble and call it purpose.

The Evolution of Pain

For a long time, I resented the phrase.

I thought it was toxic positivity — the kind that dismisses pain instead of honoring it.

But years later, I began to see something else in it.

Maybe the “reason” isn’t something given to us — maybe it’s something we build.

Maybe the reason I didn’t die that day is so I could learn how to live.

Maybe it’s so I could write these words.

So I could help someone else feel less alone in their healing.

Maybe the “reason” doesn’t come in the moment of loss, but in what we do with what’s left afterward.

Maybe the reason isn’t the pain itself, but the becoming it demands from us.

When Reason Isn’t Enough

But I still don’t think everything has a reason.

Some things are just cruel.

Children shouldn’t get sick. People shouldn’t have to bury their best friends too soon.

And no one deserves to have their body broken and rebuilt.

Sometimes there’s no cosmic alignment — just bad timing and the randomness of being human.

And maybe that’s okay to admit.

We can stop pretending every tragedy is wrapped in divine intention.

We can hold space for the possibility that life is both miraculous and meaningless, all at once.

That sometimes beauty doesn’t come from a grand reason — it comes from us choosing to create something beautiful anyway.

The Lie That Saved Me

If I’m honest, maybe that “lie” — that everything happens for a reason — saved me once.

Because it gave me a reason to hold on when I didn’t have one.

It gave me something to cling to when I was covered in scars and self-doubt.

I told myself I survived for a reason.

Even if I didn’t know what it was yet.

Even if I had to invent it later.

And in that invention, I found power.

Because maybe the truth isn’t that everything happens for a reason — but that we can make a reason for everything that happens.

We can turn our pain into purpose, our heartbreak into art, our loss into love that reaches others.

Maybe we don’t have to believe in destiny — just in our ability to rebuild.

Rewriting the Phrase

I think we’ve been misusing that line all along.

“Everything happens for a reason” isn’t meant to erase pain or rush healing.

It’s meant to remind us that we have the ability to make sense of what doesn’t make sense.

To extract something meaningful from what almost destroyed us.

So maybe it’s not a lie — maybe it’s a seed.

And we decide whether to plant it or not.

I’ve rewritten it for myself:

“Not everything happens for a reason. But everything that happens can become a reason — to rise, to grow, to soften, to begin again.”

That version feels more honest.

Less spiritual bypassing, more soul work.

It honors the pain while still leaving room for hope

The Mirror of Meaning

Sometimes I look at the scars on my ankle, the faint lines around my mouth from the surgeries, and I trace them like constellations.

They’re reminders — not of what I lost, but of what I lived through.

When people say, “Everything happens for a reason,” maybe what they really mean is, “You are strong enough to find meaning in what happened.”

Maybe that’s the heart of it.

The reason isn’t written in the stars — it’s written in us.

In how we keep going, loving, creating, trusting, despite it all.

Choosing to Believe

I don’t know if everything happens for a reason.

But I do know this: I’ve met people I never would have met had my life not fallen apart.

I’ve written words I never would have written if I hadn’t felt that kind of pain.

And I’ve learned to love myself — not for what I look like, but for what I’ve survived.

So maybe the reason doesn’t exist before the pain.

Maybe it’s born because of it.

Maybe the reason is simply that we’re still here — still showing up, still searching for light in the dark.

The Real Comfort

Here’s what I tell people now when life hits them hard:

You don’t have to find the reason right away.

You don’t have to pretend the pain is divine or justified.

You just have to keep breathing until meaning finds you.

Because one day, you’ll look back and realize you became someone softer, wiser, kinder — not because everything had a reason, but because you made your own.

That’s the kind of comfort that feels real.

Not the kind that numbs, but the kind that nurtures.

Sneakers and Stilettos

In my sneakers, I learned resilience.

In my stilettos, I learned grace.

In both, I’ve learned that life doesn’t owe me reasons — but it gives me endless chances to rewrite them.

So when someone tells me now that everything happens for a reason, I just smile.

Because maybe they’re right in their own way.

Maybe the reason doesn’t live out there, in fate or luck or divine plans.

Maybe it lives right here — in the quiet decision to keep walking, even when the road doesn’t make sense.

And maybe that’s enough reason for me.