Reasons

I always vacillate between believing everything and believing nothing, depending, I guess, on the phase of the moon or the state of my pocketbook or something else more spectral and elusive that I don't even notice, like the precise amount of radon in my air at any given moment. Along with believing in everything and believing in nothing there's also that old clincher - what about fate? Do things happen for a reason, or not? Is it all just random collections of electrons and the occasional microbe or do the gods reach down from their impenetrable mountains and take an active hand in the proceedings? There are times when I believe that not only do the gods take an active hand in the world, they win money on it, as well as having nasty senses of humor and a fondness for practical jokes. I say gods, because I always sort of felt that if you were going to go to the trouble to believe in any deity at all you might as well hedge your bets and have more than one: the more the merrier. I like the idea of small, dedicated gods, like the one for small electric appliances - the Angry Toaster God, who must be propitiated.

And then, are we here for the first time? Or do we get do-overs? Usually, I believe in reincarnation, partly because everything else in the universe seems to be recycled, so why not souls and also because it cheers me to think of a thousand thousand supposed Marie Antoinettes meeting each other in the waiting room of the afterlife. And then it's such a handy excuse: you can just plan on getting things done in your next life - I, personally, have decided that I'll try the career person workaholic making money thing on next time and skip it this go round.

Sometimes, though, in all seriousness coincidences and timing and such can make you blink and step back a bit and think, holy shit, god damn, that is fucking weird, but wow. Weird, but right. Right like right is supposed to feel, even if you never knew how that was, but somehow when you feel it you know what it is. And then you think, you know, if this thing had not happened at that time I wouldn't be able to do this this time and I wouldn't get this on so many levels. Because the collection of small coincidences and synchronicities and universal oddities that make up your life can all of sudden sometimes come together and make sense, actual sense, and it's, well, amazing. And maybe a sign that somehow, somewhere, somewhen you did do something right and, well, maybe you're doing it again and still because suddenly, instead of that ongoing, seemingly endless disturbance in the Force, there's quite the opposite. And the Force moving along just right is something pretty gods damn amazing.