When I was younger, I needed to know the reason.
Something hard would happen, and I couldn’t just let it sit there unexplained. I had to find the lesson, name the purpose, build the story that made it make sense. If I could identify the reason, I could feel like I was still in control of something that had knocked me sideways.
It’s taken me most of my life to understand that needing the reason was never really about understanding. It was about control.
Why We Reach for “Everything Happens for a Reason”
The phrase gets said with good intentions. It’s meant to comfort. But look closer at what it’s actually doing.
When something painful happens and you immediately reach for a reason, you’re skipping a step. You’re moving straight past the pain and into a tidy explanation, because the explanation feels safer than the not knowing.
The problem is, some things don’t hand you a reason. Not right away, and sometimes not ever. And when you insist on finding one anyway, you often end up forcing a story onto an experience that hasn’t finished unfolding yet.
What Needing the Reason Is Really About
It’s about control. If there’s a reason, then the hard thing wasn’t random. If it wasn’t random, you can prepare for the next one. You can protect yourself.
That’s the deal your mind is trying to make. Find the reason, keep the sense of control.
But life doesn’t actually honor that deal. Plenty of things happen with no clean lesson attached, at least not one visible in the moment. And spending your energy hunting for a reason that isn’t ready to show itself yet just keeps you stuck in the very moment you’re trying to move past.
What Changes With Age
The shift for me wasn’t dramatic. It happened slowly, over years.
At some point I noticed I’d stopped needing to know why something happened before I could accept that it had happened. I could sit with something hard and let it just be hard, without rushing to turn it into a lesson.
That didn’t mean I stopped looking for meaning entirely. It meant I stopped requiring it as a condition for peace. The meaning could come later, or not at all, and either way I could still move forward.
That’s the real shift. Not finding fewer reasons. Needing them less.
What to Do Instead of Searching for the Reason
Instead of asking “why did this happen,” try asking “what does this ask of me right now.”
The first question sends you backward, hunting for an explanation that may not exist yet. The second question keeps you present, focused on what’s actually in front of you.
You can trust that meaning sometimes arrives late, long after the moment has passed, without needing it to arrive on schedule to feel okay today.
How Working with Plant Medicine Opens This
Psilocybin often dissolves the grip of needing an explanation before you can move forward. In that space, people frequently describe feeling at peace with something they’ve never fully understood, sometimes for the first time.
Cacao supports this from the heart. It doesn’t hand you an answer. It softens the urgency around needing one, so you can hold an unresolved experience with more tenderness instead of more analysis.
Both medicines point toward the same lesson age eventually teaches on its own. Peace doesn’t require an explanation. It just requires you to stop bracing for one.
Something to Listen To This Week
“Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac. A song about looking back at change without needing to justify why it happened the way it did.
Action Prompt
Think of one thing in your life you never got a clear reason for.
Instead of searching for the explanation again, write one sentence about what it’s asking of you right now, today.
Now We Want to Hear From You
Is there something in your life you’ve made peace with, even without ever knowing why it happened?
See you next Monday.
