When Bad Things Happen

A young man emailed me this evening asking me the age old question, "why did this (a bad thing) happen to me?" Part of my response included a quote from Harlod Kushner that I whole heartedly agree with, and thougtht I would share here in this blog.

“Let me suggest that the bad things that happen to us in our lives
do not have a meaning when they happen to us. They do not happen
for any good reason which would cause us to accept them willingly.
But we can give them a meaning. We can redeem these tragedies
from senselessness by imposing meaning on them. The question we
should be asking is not, ‘What did I do to deserve this?’ That is really an unanswerable, pointless question. A better question would be, ‘Now that this has happened to me, what am I going to do about it?’"

Harold Kushner, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”

While there are so seldom satisfying answers, and all too many quesitons, the most important question must eventually become, "what now?"