“There are no accidents,” said a wise turtle named Oogway. I believe that to be a true statement. It might seem like a random series of events produced everything we see around us, from life to civilizations, but I don’t buy that. I think things happen for a reason. Here’s a small sequence of events that occurred recently in my own personal life that helped me see the structure that seemingly unrelated events produce.

The Sequence of Events

I ordered a new computer in mid-June, which didn’t arrive until mid-July.

In the meantime, my wife got very sick for about a week, and she was on the lookout for good books to read to take her mind off the pain.

She and I started reading a series of romance novels, which reminded us of our own love story. My wife recovered her health and was in a contemplative mood.

When the computer arrived, I transferred nearly all of the files over, but somehow I accidentally missed an important txt file full of HTML code that my wife uses when adding new Deja Reviewer articles to the backend.

I had unplugged the external hard drive containing all of the files I had taken off of the old computer because I also store my work files on it. Once a week, I take it to the office. I was exercising while she was working on my article, so I wasn’t available to simply grant her access to the file.

She tried searching for that file and instead found a treasure trove of old txt files she had saved and forgotten about years ago. They’re numerous instant-messaging conversations she shared with a boy she had liked long ago and was devastated when he stopped reciprocating her feelings.

As a result of her painful physical recovery, she was in the mood to begin making a psychological recovery. She is willing to confront sad memories and put them into proper context in order to finally face them and move past them.

Lessons I Learned

If the computer had arrived much earlier, like I thought it would, my wife would have been too sick to use it and thus, we wouldn’t have had a chance to find those txt files.

If my wife hadn’t gotten sick, I wouldn’t have been motivated to find those books for her to remind her of how we fell in love and all of the emotional baggage she had been carrying when we first met.

If I hadn’t inexplicably missed that critical txt file during the transfer process to the new computer, my wife wouldn’t have had a reason to go hunting for old txt files.

Also, if I hadn’t been exercising or had just left the external hard drive plugged into the computer, it would have been a simple matter to locate the file.

Basically, there were a whole bunch of events that seemed either frustrating or unnecessarily complicated that led to my wife beginning to find a solace she hadn’t known she needed. I wouldn’t have predicted something like this taking place, but I’m glad it did because I think it’s going to be good for both of us in the long run.

After failing to find the txt file on the new computer a little over a week ago, I texted my wife, “I’m sorry I couldn’t find that file.” And, funnily enough, she responded with, “It’s okay. I love you. Everything happens for a reason.” How appropriate! I had forgotten about that exchange until I nearly finished writing this article.

If you’re ever feeling like there’s no purpose to your life or everything just seems to be going wrong, try looking for patterns in how your life has turned out. You may just see someone’s hand at work guiding you to something better than you could have come up with on your own. And that’s no accident.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

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