College Admissions Essay: Everything Happens For A Reason

When you’re younger, every little bump in the road feels like the absolute end of the world. Being that I’ve always had a dramatic side, every trip, stumble or fall throughout my childhood was a full blown tragedy in my eyes. Each time I would scream or cry my dad would counter my tantrum with the phrase “everything happens for a reason.” These five words followed me through the years and echoed in my head as I got older and life got harder. With every hardship, that phrase would resurface in my brain and I would desperately try to find the purpose to the pain I was enduring. This replacement of sorrow with meaning comforted me throughout my younger years, until I opened my eyes to the complete lie that statement truly holds. The more I was exposed to true tragedy, beyond scraping my knee

on the sidewalk, I finally began to see the fiction of those words.

I’ve spent the majority of my life trying to find the silver lining in all hardship. I have prided myself on prioritizing the bright side and sweeping any impending negativity. However the fallacy of everything happening for some greater reason is purely a notion I cannot except. I’ve been moved to believe that despite those words being plastered on every motivational poster or Instagram bio, some things in life are just simply unfair and the only option is to accept them and try to move on as best you can. I just refuse to believe that there is some logical reason my 5 year old cousin developed a brain tumor and passed away a few short months later. I won’t accept that some greater power intended for my best friend’s aunt to be fatally shot, and leave me to help piece back together the girl I knew before her world fell apart. I cannot fathom what great reason would be worth the diagnosis of my anxiety disorder or my reoccuring fight against depression. While I cannot dismerit the occurance of fate or coincedences, consistent piling of tragedy doesn’t need a reason and shouldn’t be defended. Don’t tell me that witnessing my childhood friends become

alcoholics is for some greater good and that I should wait to see what light at the end of the tunnel it brings me. Some thing shouldn’t happen and they only occur because they can. While this analysis may appear as painfully negative, that is not my intension. I simply wish that instead of being taught to constantly find the logic in our sorrows, instead we were encouraged to face our struggles and not be afriad of sadness. Since my recognition of the lacking legitimacy of eveything happening for a reason I have drawn several conclusions. It is okay to hurt and it is okay to be angry. Life can surely be unfair and our sole option is to not let our tragedies define us, but instead work towards healing one day at a time. Being engulfed for eternity in sadness is not my coping method of choice, however neither is assigning the blame to an unnamed rationalization. The ability to recognize the unwarranted actions of the universe awards us with the capability of genuinely healing instead of regifting the burden to it’s imaginary purpose. While the extinction of the phrase “everything happens for a reason” would ultimately call for the tragic removal of inspirational posters in school halls around the world, challenging this motto has allowed me to come to terms with tragedy and reality without hiding behind an unspoken purpose.