Imposed meanings onto events

Today I bumped into a primary school friend. Over a span of 10 years she is the only primary school classmate I have met with any consistency at all, and is the only friend of childhood times I know for sure hasn't been in a car accident in the last 6 months. If I were to meet her before the moment before I die, she would probably be the person I've known the longest in my entire life, family members aside.

That was what I wrote yesterday. Today I bumped into another primary school friend. He told me there is a class gathering coming up soon. It's being organised on Facebook, and I wonder if I would have known of this gathering if I hadn't bumped into this guy. I'm always amazed at such coincidences. One day I was thinking about my primary school friends, the next I bump into one who tells me there is going to be a reunion.

I'm also amused at how some people would take such coincidences as the work of a divine being. If I am a religious person, I would probably be thanking God now for answering my wish, and granting me the opportunity to realise which primary school classmate hasn't been in a car accident so far. But I'm not sure if I really should be doing that, my religious orientation aside.

Let us say I am a religious person. It is the case that I either thank God selectively, or I thank God unconditionally, across all contexts. That is to say, I either thank God for certain things that happened in my life, or I thank God for everything that has happened in my life. If it is the case of the former, then thanking God loses its meaning, because you only select the good things that happened in your life, thank God for them, and then leave the bad things unaccounted for. If it is the case of the latter, then I am in a situation where I will always rationalize away misfortune, and I should consequently never be unhappy. Suppose I go for this primary school reunion and find that it is very unenjoyable. But at the end of the day I look back and say, hey at least now I'm more motivated to do well in my life, because everyone else is doing well in their lives. So I thank God for granting me this opportunity to improve my life.

But this is a simple case. Let us say I got into a car accident on my way back and lose a limb: consistent with my thanking God for everything in life, it seems like I should be thanking God for 1), saving me from death, and 2) giving me this opportunity to gain mental strength from this life-changing experience - even better if I make new friends in the hospital. It gets more absurd. Suppose I lose a family member. A religious person who believes in all-benevolent divine providence is committed to saying: thank you for this experience. This religious person is committed to believing that this unfortunate event happened for a reason, and that this reason will always lead to good consequences. Hence we find, on death of a person, the likely statement that this dead person is merely moving on to a better place. If this is what religious people genuinely believe, then funerals should be a matter of joy and celebration, not of mourning and desolation.

The good thing about being a non-religious person is that not only am I able to escape the conundrum thus posed, my appreciation for fortunate coincidences is not necessarily more limited than that of the religious person's. I'm amazed at the chances of such a thing happening: bumping into a primary school friend 1 day, thinking about how the rest are doing, and then bumping into another primary school friend the next day who informs me there is going to be a reunion gathering. I marvel at the probability, but I don't find a need to explain this with divine providence of any sort. But if I'm going to thank divine providence for arranging fortunate events, then I better question why certain misfortunates happen; upon which I should then move on to never being an unhappy person, because everything happens for a good reason.