Philip A. Gonzales
Reasons Happen for a Thing
For years, I tried to believe that things happen for a reason. I performed some uncomfortable mental contortions in an attempt to fit that idea into my cranium. Didn’t work; I still don’t get it. The term “for a reason” means that there is an answer to the question “Why?” So to complete the statement “Things happen for a reason… ” I had to say “… but nobody will ever know the reason.” For what reason does genocide happen? For what reason did that plane crash? For what reason will an avalanche fill her belly with that little mountain village? I give up. Turns out that our cognition is miraculous in taking us through the pleasures and perils of life.
Things happen. We sense the things that are happening. That’s cognition. But then comes our metacognition. It’s all over the map. Yes, things do happen. Life is not messy; chocolate is messy. Life is perilous. And we want to know why. When the largest Tsunami in human history hit Alaska, there were three boats in its path. One sank. The other two rode the crest of that 1,700-foot wave and the occupants survived. Our inner beings want to ride the crest of the bad stuff that happens, so we ask “why”. Just the act of searching for a reason gives us a feeling of rising above the struggles; it drives us toward refinement of our mental suvival skills. It’s very useful. There is hardly ever a clear answer, but we try to make survival more of a certainty by looking for reasons.
Reasons happen for a thing. Reasons and things happen almost simultaneously, but your brain begins to create the reasons within a very small fraction of a second after an occurrence that requires your attention. If you are using your senses to recognize the true nature of the world around you, then attention happens. Attention requires the use of three parts of your brain: the sensory, the emotional, and the action centers. It’s called the Triangular Circuit of Attention. Right alongside all this raw perception and attention, your left hemisphere chimes in as the “spin doctor”, in the words of psychologist Steven Pinker of Harvard University. That’s when the reasons happen, and they play a leading role in your survival. The more dangerous, confusing, or bizarre the occurrence, the faster your brain will kick into action searching for an explanation. New York University’s Joseph LeDoux (LeDoux Lab) has performed research that reveals the brain functions that arise as we cause reasons to happen for a thing. Author Laurence Gonzales (Deep Survival, Everyday Survival), writing in National Geographic Adventure, surveys the work of Pinker and LeDoux. Um, yes… he is my brother.
I remain open-minded. An explanation of how things can happen for a reason would hold my interest. I believe in God. But I think that the power of God is revealed in the patterns of our universe that, by their very precision, strike us as being largely random. In light of all the science that illustrates how reasons happen, I’m feeling pretty good about this little survival mechanism that’s been given to us. We live in a world of change, but we try to establish comfortable patterns. It’s in our nature to try to make the rough places plain. Peace is not inherent in nature, but we strive to create peace in our minds. Still, there is a looming question: Can I create peace in a healthy mind that recognizes all of the realities that my senses report?
As your “spin doctor” comes up with reasons, allow it to lead you toward a deeper understanding of your own responses to what happens, without judgement. Steven Pinker also calls the left side of the brain a “baloney generator”. Well, it’s up to you to determine whether your left hemisphere is going to generate baloney, or to provide you with an incisive frame of thought as you happen to your own life.