I know he meant well. He’s a great guy--smart, funny, and generous. Even though he’s a just casual acquaintance, he sent me an uncomfortably hefty check and called me more often than my own sister did. He’s a wonderful human being, and I mean that. But then he said it. Yesterday, in a reply to an email in which I mentioned the total loss of my house and the demise of my six-year relationship, he wrote “I like to think everything happens for a reason.”

Back in September, a week after Katrina, I was shopping for cheap underwear in a Houston ghetto resale shop when a wide-eyed woman, also from New Orleans, overheard Eric and I bickering and struck up a conversation about Katrina and Jesus. As we parted, she clutched my hand, raised her other hand above her head, and through teary eyes pronounced, “God bless you. I know that everything happens for a reason. I know it.”

And I really wanted to tell her, “No. It doesn’t,” but I chickened out.
Everything happens for a reason. What a horrible thing to say. Are you trying to tell me that some benevolent deity or mystical force—call it God, Allah, Fate, Karma, Shiva, or Gaia—chose to kill thousands of people, flood my city, destroy my home, drown my turtle, and cause massive apocalyptic mayhem for some ineffable reason?

What reason?

The only events that have reasons are those that occur as the result of human choice. That’s it. There’s a reason I broke up with Eric, but it’s mine and mine alone. There were reasons for the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine shooting, and September 11th. We may never understand those reasons, as they are the reasons of crazy people and exist only in their heads, but they are reasons nonetheless. Point granted. Some things have reasons.
But please, believe me, there is no reason for natural phenomena. The word “reason” implies thought. Nobody chose to push Katrina this way or Rita that way. There was no motivation behind the Indonesian tsunami or the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Read up on your meteorology, geology, chaos theory, or quantum mechanics. They all say the same thing as the t-shirt--a butterfly flaps its wings over there, a tectonic shift over here, and then--SHIT HAPPENS.

Sometimes it happens to you.

This is not to say that an event, insignificant or cataclysmic, can’t have meaning. I’m not that much of an existentialist. Katrina and it’s aftermath have a fuckload of meaning, personal and global. However, finding that meaning requires work, analysis, and thought. Spouting cliché platitudes only gets in the way.

To truly understand the meaning of an event you have to question its real causes (Warmer waters in the Gulf exacerbated by global warming, maybe?) and perhaps how it could have been mitigated (More money for better levees and a prompter rescue effort? A less economically divided populace to lessen looting and shooting?). Also, you can find meaning in what the extremes of circumstance reveal (How fucked up my relationship really was. The racism and poverty. The generosity and hope. How good some people are. How selfish and evil others can be.) However, until you find some meaning, you won’t be able to do anything meaningful.

The fall of 2005 has officially been the worst time in my life, even worse than high school, and that’s pretty fucking bad. I lost everything under 12 feet of muddy water. Everything. To make sure I don’t turn into a raving, depressed PTSD case who believes he’s being punished for some unspecified sin, I’ve been working like hell, day and night, to make this event mean something. Don’t dismiss me, don’t insult me, and don’t abdicate your own responsibility by telling me it happened for a reason.

I was shopping for underwear in a Houston ghetto resale shop when a wide-eyed woman... overheard Eric and I bickering."