Ecclesiastes

There are some things that just cannot be explained. Cannot be understood. No amount of curiosity, brilliance, or analytical skill will ever be a match for them. They are things that can only be walked out, lived out, or slept out, so to speak. One just has to keep walking, keep living, keep sleeping. It's not even a faith thing. There is no faith that "it will work out" or "be ok" or "it will come". Because faith has nothing to do with it. They just are. The most insecure and helpless of people physically and emotionally survive the "worst" of tragedies. The most independent collapse at the first hint shaky ground. The most generous and caring people are despised and the most cold-hearted, loved. Hopes, that are so deep that those who hold them don't even understand them, never come to pass even after years of struggle. Random ideas that occur happen with hardly a second thought. And yet, the opposite of these are true as well. We hear the stories of those who hope against hope and, after a lifetime of waiting, receive their joy. The people who go and do according to their own wishes and desires, and not those of anyone else, are happy and overcome seemingly impossible obstacles. And the aloof are left in their own misery.

What is the "rule"? There is none. Some hopes, some efforts, some actions may be more "rational" than others, but really, there is no knowing the outcome. Our best educated guesses turn out to be incorrect. Our actions that we do out of pure folly end up being the best moments of our lives. And only those who have thought their actions through survive. So in all of this, what is there to keep us from joining the Ecclesiastical writer and saying that "everything is meaningless, a chasing after the wind"?