It's a good way to console yourself when things go wrong. More than that, actually: people cling to this expression when things go wrong. If something of yours gets lost or stolen--which has happened to me more times than I care to admit--you smarten up about keeping track of your iPods and IDs, and you can use it as an opportunity to realize how lucky you are that it was just a something that you lost and not a someone. If you fail at a task--a test, paper, project or presentation at work, whatever--you can evaluate where you went wrong and how to fix it in the future. Broken relationships teach you what to look for the next time around, and what you can probably do to make yourself a little more bearable.
I think that this mentality is also applicable to the unknown. There are moments in everyone's life where you face the go-with-your-gut situation that requires you to act fast and trust that things will work out. Plus, let's face it: spontaneity it just makes life more interesting (and story-worthy). I bring this up now because two huge things are happening to me right now. Admittedly, I'm probably being melodramatic about this; everyone graduating faces these Two Huge Things at some point or another, whether right after college or a year or so down the line. But the job/apartment duo hit me before I even turned around to realize it was coming. And before I was even looking for anything beyond informational interviews I was presented with a fantastic opportunity to work at a small media agency in the South End.
Maybe I should give a little background. I've never been someone who can decide on a TV channel before flipping through everything to make sure I've picked the very best use of my lazy 30 minutes. When I go shopping, I'll visit a store, visit another store, visit the first store again and put a shirt on hold until I'm sure no other store has a better version of it. Looking for a college that fit me and my aspirations was a headache that required two additional visits for my final three choices. Et. Cetera.
So when I was presented with the opportunity to go in for an interview, go in again, meet everyone and one week later be presented with a (really cool) job offer and a 401k plan, I had to ditch my commitment to thorough, methodical option-weighing. No, I've never worked at a small agency. No, I haven't full-out applied to other places other than practicing various networking tactics via email, Twitter, and cash bars. But I went with my gut and the "I have a good feeling about this place" reasoning. And I said yes, I'm free to work before I graduate.
And then there's the apartment. My friend and future roommate, Molly, and I had our hearts set on a perfect apartment right around the corner from Fenway Park. We had the paperwork ready and hours before we were about to write the check we got a call that the place had been snatched up. Here is where panic would ensue. But! Now we are exploring options with five other apartments and it turns out one of them might be bigger, cheaper, and in the same location. I might be speaking too soon, but it's moments like these where I feel myself inching over into the "everything happens for a reason" camp.
Sure, you might be skeptical about this mentality, and I'm right there with you. Maybe nothing happens for any damn reason, but over time we teach ourselves to take something away from every situation we face--some of us better than others--with grace and positivity, so that for every credit card you lose and every presentation you dismally bomb, you go away with it saying "I'll be smarter next time." You learn to learn. And I think that adopting this mentality helps make more people more happy more often. But I'm also learning that jumping on opportunity before meticulously weighing the options is sometimes far more rewarding.
So next time you see someone who is just obnoxiously happy, tell yourself it's just because they've learned to learn, or that they recently took a chance and it worked out for them. And then you can go thank me for that. Just kidding. But really.
