Of Fate and Folly - Katie

           I've often wondered about reconciling the idea that we're here by some cosmic accident with the idea that we're folded into a divine plan, that roughly 7 billion unique souls each serve some purpose. Is there significance to our existence and the seemingly insignificant and fleeting roles we play on planet earth?

          If you believe nothing is a coincidence, then you see meaning everywhere you look. As a believer in miracles great and small, I can totally get behind this point of view. The spectacular sunset on the eve before my mother's funeral gave me a much needed sense of peace. The notion that each friend or family member I'm sharing this journey with gives me an opportunity to both learn something new and continue to figure out how to love better. And certainly, escaping the clutches of a serial killer makes me wonder what my purpose for sticking around all these years might be. 

          Today, just before sitting down to write, the news broke of 22-year old Otto Warmbier being freed from N. Korea (where the college student had been imprisoned after supposedly taking down a propaganda poster.) It was also reported that the young man had been in a coma for 16 months; he has since died. This is the sort of story that drives home how some of us who count ourselves lucky, are really just hanging on by a random thread. There is no hint of a divine plan in Otto's horrific story. There is potential for meaningless chaos and tragedy. I can understand this point of view too.

          What about the idea articulated at the end of Forrest Gump that it's both? That we've each been given our little plot of earth with the freedom and opportunity to play the cards we're dealt the best way we can. Viktor Frankl said in his famous Man's Search for Meaning, "Everything can be taken...but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." He arrived at this epiphany from the inside of a concentration camp, so he should know.

          I don't know for sure which it is, that we are here by accident, or we have run into each other on purpose. But I do know, either way, we are not here alone. And, we find meaning in our connection and care of others. In fact, it is in our uniquely human ability to love that our existence matters at all. Sounds heavenly to me.