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There are plenty of clichés I don't mind: "too many cooks spoil the broth," that's a classic. "Don't spread yourself too thin," I'll always fall back on that. But there is one that I am not so fond of, and that I've had to start cracking down on: "everything happens for a reason. Let me tell you why this bothers me.

I am someone who suffers from a smorgasbord of psychological conditions (I'm not saying I'm special, just inline with this millieu of 20-somethings), and among those are schizoaffective disorder, the paranoid aspects of which can consume my reality. My mind has suffered absolute torture, been put through the wringer, been to hell and back, etc., et al. because of the incessant urge to look for meaning and connections in every little detail of reality, thinking everything was somehow more deeply related than it actually was, more personally significant than the evidence demonstrates. This is the pipeline to delusional and magic thinking. I have come to the point in my life where I am content letting things be, and I no longer find the idea of cosmic interconnectedness palatable or useful. Sure, everything technically does happen for a reason, but most of the time those "reasons" are very banal, and sometimes even unknowable to us entirely. It is better not to make assumptions where they can be eliminated.

I don't want to get into the specifics of my illness; maybe some day I will feel more comfortable doing that. Fact of the matter is, sometimes people just do things for no reason; because they feel like it; because they don't really feel like it. Sometimes the whether changes, sometimes you get a spam email, or a bird chirps, or... the list goes on. It can happen for no rhyme or reason, and it's better not to analyze every little micron and iota of the world around you. Which do you prefer - a dead end, or insanity? I've experienced both and I can safely say, for me, it sure ain't the latter.