Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy

1. The practice of claiming to have higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case.

Everything happens for a reason. That's what the world's romantics preach to us up high from their tower of spiritual piety. It's what Hollywood cooingly whispers into our ears with every unrealistic movie temptingly laid out before us. You didn't get that job you wanted? Everything happens for a reason. She kissed someone else behind your back? Everything happens for a reason. Your world crashed down around your ears in two years of emotional turmoil, whilst you asked the world through your streaming tears "what the fuck is going on?"..? Everything. Happens. For. A. Reason.

Well, quite frankly, bullshit.

To my ears, suggesting that everything happens for a reason smacks of deceitful posturing. It feels like nothing but a warm, fluffy blanket of pretence that there's some rhyme or reason to the trauma of life. Because so rarely does the 'reason' show itself.

Sure, I don't deny that often, should you dig deep enough and with the power of hindsight, you can often pick out a nice, shiny conclusion to the story. Shit, I could look back and decide that being diagnosed with Crohn's instantaneously upon picking up my first mortgage was God telling me to slow down. No doubt I'd never have gone travelling without it. I'd never have had the impetus to run away from all of my problems and discover the real definition of success. That to be successful, all a man need do is to find a way to be happy. That I'm not happy wouldn't be the point; the defining 'reason' would be the discovery.

Allegedly.

Of course, in some instances, brushing the muck away to uncover the 'reason' is decidedly more tricky. An ideal case in point belongs to my mother. A few months after separating from her husband of thirty years, whilst still worrying about the health of her youngest son, some six weeks short of her only daughter's wedding...her mother passes away. Just at the time when she needs her mum more than she ever has in her adult life; poof, in a flash of tragedy, orphaned. Where's the reassuring 'reason'? Where's the warm, fluffly blanket of consolement? Where is the fucking point? To make her stronger? Maybe it was the inheritance that paid off her new mortgage? Well you know what? I'm pretty damn certain that my mum would have foregone the bonus resiliance points and taken the monthly repayments to have her sole remaining parent there for the ride.

If everything happens for a reason, perhaps sometimes that reason is that life, as ever, is a bitch. And that blanket is wearing awfully thin.

Over the last few posts, we've shared a little now, you and I. Together, we've held uncomfortable hands, meandering awkwardly through the darker, more melancholy shadows of my pysche. Avoided each other's eyes studiously as we pretended that this blog isn't a tirade of anonymous self-indulgence. 

I'm comfortable admitting that at least. I suspect you're getting to know me for the cynic I am. As flawed as the next man. As packed to the brim with indignant double standards as you are. If not more so.

Because whilst I proclaim disdainfulness and loathing for 'Everything happens for a reason', I slip comfortably into bed fondling the sweaty genitals of 'It wasn't meant to be'.

Everytime I lose a deal at work? It wasn't meant to be. Every time I let an opportunity slip through my lazily clasping fingers? It wasnt meant to be. Everytime I say the wrong thing, at the wrong time, to the wrong girl. It. Wasn't. Meant. To. Be.

The lacklustre excuse for my own failings, the result of a distinct lack of enthusiam to make the effort of learning from my own mistakes. Yet, at the same time, and in a fashion that I don't truly understand, I doubtlessly believe the notion of 'It wasn't meant to be'. Perhaps, with its intrinsically negative slant, I just feel more comfortable with the belief that sometimes life is meant to be disastrous. That my soul feels defiantly unwilling to bond with the notion that a hurtful situation can later transpire to have been for the best.

Even to my mind, it seems a tragic comprehension.

To be distinctly at odds with 'Everything happens for a reason' whilst being able to affirm that 'It wasn't meant to be' seems like a path destined to end in a life unsuccessful. A life unhappy.

Which means that I have some effort to apply to the situation. Because without recapturing the drive, the yearning ambition of a 21 year old with the world at his feet, a successful life will be otherwise unobtainable.

Hypocrisy. So often a miserable affair.