Trust the randomness

I've come to realize that I've had way too much fear in my life. That I have been too fearful. Too fearful about a lot of things--about most things. And this fear had made me into a certain kind of person. A person who tried to control/manage/plan too much of her life.

At this point in my life--64 years old--I want to fear nothing. Absolutely nothing--especially not old age, illness, or death. I want to live one day at a time without fear. To me, it's not so much about courage as it's about Trust. I want to let go of the fear and replace it with trust. I want to let go of the illusion of control, make fewer plans each day, and trust the daily flow of my life. Trust that that flow is Divine. And I want to listen to/hear Her voice more often.

Not too long ago, my teenaged students began to repeat a new slang phrase that, I guess, their generation had come up with. They would say often and with conviction, "That's random." According to them, most everything was "random." Immediately, something deep down inside of me objected to that concept.

Where did they get that phrase from and are they still saying it? Is it somehow connected to a movie, to technology or to the computer or to smart phones in particular? Is it one of those slang expressions, like "That's cool!" that my generation came up with, that is here to stay. I hope not. I do not like it. It irks me!

Now as you already know, the word random means "having no specific pattern, purpose, or objective." The teens said it so much about every and any thing--so much so that it began to come across as if they thought/felt that all of life was "random" or without purpose or meaning. Yes, that's what bothered me about that slang expression. It felt to me as if the teens began coming across as even more apathetic than usual because everything to them seemed "random" or with purpose. At times, they would even emphasize it, "That's so random."

I have come to believe not in life's randomness but rather in its synchronicity. I choose to believe that things happen for a reason--all things--the little and the big ones and all those inbetween ones--if we could only tune in to and trust what life is trying to tell us.

To me the word synchronicity means, "a coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related." If we believe that things happen for a reason, we have a different attitude toward life than if we believe that things happen randomly. We respect life more. We respect ourselves and others more. We respect and trust life more.

Trusting the process/the flow of life is so important in our lives today. Trust is more important than ever since things seem more random than ever, perhaps because of technology, such as facebook and smart phones and streaming movies and tv programs, etc.

(Now facebook seems to be the ultimate in randomness. I used to think that I was supposed to read all of the news feed every time I went to facebook. Well, anyone who has 500 "friends" or more knows that that doesn't work or that it could make you go crazy trying to keep up. So now even on facebook, I have to trust the randomness of my seeing what I am supposed to see.)

The expression "That's random" feels so hopeless to me. I choose to believe that this beautiful spider's web reflecting off the morning sunlight outside my window here in front of my desk is not random. But that it is there to teach me something about life. If only to allow me to slow down and to admire its design. If only to remind me of that Walt Whitman poem called "A Noiseless Patient Spider" so that I may reread it.  If only to remind me of the connectivness of all things in our lives. Or of how fast life can get complicated. Or to remind me of how quickly all that we have built can be swept away.

I choose to believe that it is not a random spider's web. I choose to believe that nothing in God's universe is random.