accidents

the other morning i spoke to three different people and heard three different pieces of bad news. all what most people would call accidents, all happening to people who at a first glance you would say are innocent. even upon a closer examination i cannot happen to think of anything most other reasonable people would have done differently. essentially, what happened to them could have happened to just about any other careful person in the same situation. it is a matter of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. what do you call that? bad luck ? destiny? some hidden agenda in someone's grand plan?

not that you have to call it something. you can choose to shudder and say please i do not want to think about these things and be done with that. or, you might want to make sense of it. if you do, how do you do this sense making? an attempt of making sense assumes that there is something to be made sense of. is there?

at the heart of every one of such scenarios is that age old question, is this universe probable or is it causal? everything that happens to you - both the good and the bad - is it a matter of chance or is there a cause and effect relationship to your life's events? and even worse, which one would you like it to be? what puts your mind more at ease?

don't most of us flit between the two constantly? when bad things happen to good people we want to believe it is an unlucky coincidence, a mishap, the cosmic dice falling on the wrong square. on the other hand when our efforts come to fruition we offer that as a proof of causality - hard work pays off or some such other cliche.

an accident by definition is any event that happens unexpectedly, without a deliberate plan or cause. does anything meet that criterion?

a part of a bridge falls on the highway below and an unfortunate woman who happened to be driving underneath, dies.

a small poisonous snake hiding in the bhindi container at a grocery store bites a woman, she thinks she pricked her hand, dies by the time she reaches her car in the parking lot.

a passenger sitting next to a young man on a bus beheads him at no known provocation, no relationship was ever found between the two.

each one of the scenarios above are not completely accidental now are they? well i admit they are accidental to the victims. there is no way the lady driving on the highway could have reasonably known about the state of the bridge, but someone should have. she must have assumed that someone out there was taking care of that bridge and would know to stop traffic when it became structurally unstable. don't we all make that assumption when we get out of our homes? what is the alternative? we cannot go around inspecting every road every bridge for ourselves, we would never get anywhere that way. but in the larger scheme of things, can you reasonably believe that the bridge was perfectly safe one moment and as if on a whim decided to break down the next? no. at least i cannot. there had to have been a slow degradation, a gradual cessation of mechanical functions. someone out there did not do their job. it is not completely an accident then, is it?

yes, i have already conceded, you could argue that to the victim it was, an accident.

its like to the electron the world is probable, but to this table it is causal. that is my trouble with quantum mechanics, how does a probable microcosm create a causal macrocosm? or does it? wait, i digress. i can write a whole book on my troubles with quantum, but then, who cannot? ahha! moving right along...

so then, what is our world view? even though there is a cause and effect relationship to most events, sometimes from an individual's perspective things could happen - as if out of the blue.

and then we come to the even harder question. what do you do when you are at the receiving end of these unpleasant surprises? what are your options?

a) you can try to ignore everything and try to go back living like nothing ever happened. sounds silly? but that's what people tell you to do. when someone dies, when you lose something important, when someone takes away what should have rightfully been yours. they tell you, you have to move on. don't they?

b) the other equally bad choice you have is to let it change your view of the world completely. you lose all faith, you cannot bring yourself to believe that anything is certain, in your head its all up for grabs. as far as you are concerned you are not sure if the sun's gonna rise tomorrow.

in my personal opinion ( i have walked through both of those doors) they are both equally bad choices. of course something happened, you won't be doing anybody any favors by denying that, but that is not the only thing that happened. a lot else is happening too. some of it is predictable and some is not. to be able to distinguish, what is and what is not, well, that's the pain now. isn't it? that's the stuff that gives you migranes.

and because it is intellectually overwhelming, we sometimes choose not to think of it. we run to god or some times run away from him. when really bad things happen to good people some of us become devout, we pray in some ulterior hope, please do not let this happen to me, or we become atheists, why i should i pray, if this is what you do to good people, what are you going to do to me. go ahead, take your best shot, see if i care.

emotionally, i have been everywhere. i have turned to god and turned away from him, based on external factors.

intellectually, i see the fallacy of it.

it exhibits the weakness of my faith, or the lack of it. any idea of god in my head that is not based on a sound grasp of the underlying principles, is useless. it is a broken compass at the mercy of the winds and is not the tool to carry around haplessly trying to find your way in life. accidents or no accidents.