Does everything happen for a reason?

Last week, for the holidays, I was back home in Atlanta where my whole family and most of the people I grew up with reside. It was a chance to catch up with some very dear old friends, and to see some faces that I hadn’t seen in years. Lo and behold: the flu struck. One night I went to bed feeling inexplicably freezing, and woke up a few hours later drenched in sweat. And from there, the next week or so was spent in abject misery. Fever, chills, body aches like I’ve never had before. I could barely eat or move. Seriously, it was probably the worst flu I’ve ever had. It lingered on and on and threw a wrench into most of the socializing that I had planned.

I wanted to dwell on the unfairness. As I lay in my childhood bedroom, with my parents bringing me everything from chicken soup to herbal tea, and going to the store just to fetch aspirin and cough syrup, I couldn’t help but grumble at my misfortune.

Then, my mom said something. Isn’t it lucky that you got sick here, where we could take care of you, and not in Nashville where you would have been all alone?

This one idea made me reevaluate everything I’d been feeling. My parents are two of the most wonderful, caring people that I have ever met. The fact that they’re my own parents is far and away one of the greatest blessings of my life. On top of that, they both recently retired from busy careers and now have more time on their hands than they really know what to do with. So when their wayward, 30-year old son comes home and falls ill? They were there, ready to spring into action with all the parental love and nurture that had lain dormant for so long. Not only were they willing to take care of me, they wanted to take care of me. And for those 6-7 days, while I was miserable, I had the two people who love me most helping me out. There quite literally could not have been a better time to get the flu.

So did I get cursed by getting the flu, or did I get blessed by getting the flu at the right time and place? Was it a total coincidence or was the universe looking out for me? Yes, the flu sucked. But had it happened five days earlier or five days later, it would have sucked exponentially more. I don’t really know how to interpret this. There’s a million ways to believe in why things happen the way they do. Some very smart people believe we’re all just atoms colliding randomly in the darkness. Other smart people believe everything is predetermined, and there is no free will.

I believe that I have really, really good parents.