The Universe is not Punishing You

  Aren’t the first moments after making a life-changing decision exhilarating? Even the obstacles you know will come seem manageable. Even the obstacles that are already present, often time and money, seem one strong planning session from being solved. Then the hurdles coming rolling down the hill at top speed.

Not all stories ease you into them, not every journey starts with a minor inconvenience that builds to larger problems as you develop as a person and are able to handle them. Sometimes life hands out a hard setback seemingly from the moment you make the decision! There are times when life hands out multiple concurrent setbacks, and it feels like far more than you could possibly handle.  It will feel as though the Universe is testing you, punishing you even. The sheer idea of pursuing the goal now seems laughable, childish. Who has the time or resources to go after such things now? And if the Universe has such a visceral, over-the-top reaction to you even thinking about doing it, then obviously that means it does not want you to do the thing, right?

Obviously, the Almighty Glow Cloud (All hail!) that is the Universe knows better about what is best for you than you do. Okay, sure. I hear you. But what if–now stick with me on this–that isn’t what the Universe is saying at all? If the Universe is saying anything that we mere mortals can possibly understand, never mind act on, why must it be that we cannot have the thing we want? Who decided we were predestined not to have the life we want and will be punished for pursuing it? The further one looks down this particular rabbit hole, the less it makes sense to adhere to this perspective. Especially as we so often exclusively apply it to ourselves.

                So, if you would indulge me a moment, let us go through and deconstruct these thought processes one by one and see how well they hold water against alternative readings of the same concept. For clarity here, when I say the Universe it can be safe to follow that I mean any God of your choosing, the devil, or any other non-human Higher Life Form which applies to your logic and worldview. Aliens. Yes, insert Aliens into your logic and see if it still sounds good. As a quick academic exercise, we will go ahead and assume a few things that are necessary to even contemplate the will of a non-sapient entity:

1.)    That the Universe is an entity with the ability to reason and plan out the lives of roughly 7.2 billion humans individually.

2.)    The Universe wants to do this, has done this, is doing it and will continue to do so.

3.)    The Universe has little to no ethical qualms about intentionally setting up certain humans to succeed and others to fail.

4.)    The Universe will punish those from the second group for trying to join the first.

5.)    The Universe has nothing else going on and is invested in you specifically.

6.)    The thing you want to do isn’t harmful to you or anyone else.

Just contemplating the will of such a being, especially when you add in any concept of ‘God’s Will’ or ‘Random for a Reason’ logic, seems like an exercise in futility. I cannot have the life I want because God/ The Universe/Aliens say I cannot? Well yes, that’s precisely what humans have told themselves and each other for millennia. It is an easy thing to rely on, especially when the more difficult adversities that coincide with pursuing the life we seek come knocking on our door. Just for the sake of argument, to be Human’s advocate for a change, let’s unpack some of these.

For the record: These alternatives might not be comfortable, but neither is believing the Universe just hates you in specific.

The Universe is Testing you

     Obviously, you made a gigantic life change that will require a lot of focus, time and effort. You might have to effectively restructure a giant part of your life as you have lived it thus far. You are ready to do whatever it takes to make this a reality, no matter how hard it theoretically gets. Then, an unexpected divorce or dissolution of a relationship. Or someone gets sick.  Or has an accident that stalls progress. Well clearly this is a test, right? The Universe wants to find out how many complicating factors it can throw into your life to determine how badly you personally want it before you give up or succeed.

And those are the only two options: Success or absolute surrender to the status quo. There can be no middle ground in which other priorities get shuffled around to allow for both the life you want and this new factor, your support network cannot figure out new ways to help you at this time at all. You have to work yourself into the ground for this goal; double, triple and quadruple down if you have to. You are the musical version of Alexander Hamilton and the second half of the play, in which a burnt out Alexander makes several incredibly bad decisions that result in the near complete undoing of much of what he worked for in the first half and his support system spending a lifetime trying to clean up after it will definitely not happen to you. The grind is all you know, the grind is all you need. And when you need to take a break, well that’s just when you work harder isn’t it?

Alternative: The Universe is helping you figure out your priorities

                You just made a gigantic life change that will require a lot of time, focus and effort. You will have to restructure much of your life as you have lived it thus far. You believe you are ready to do this, no matter what. But that no matter what will mean letting things go: long held beliefs, relationships, habits, unhealthy fixations, bad health practices. Not enough people really look at the words “Change my life!” and think of the enormity of that statement. And here’s the thing: To go after the major things in life, you will have to change several aspects of your life as you have lived it. Not just on a pragmatic level, but down to your thought patterns and beliefs. The life you are seeking is quite possibly not in alignment with the life you’ve built. So it may be necessary to figure out what needs to go to fit both the life you seek and this new element, should it be one that fits your priorities, into the life of the person you are becoming.

In essence, you need to find a little bit more Aaron Burr in your life: Know when to back off, calculate your decisions for the long term rather than just the immediate short term goal, know when it’s appropriate to scream your truth and when to tolerate that one obnoxious person you can’t stand in the name of your goals. No, you do not need to talk less and smile more. But you do need to know what aspect of your life and your ambitions take precedence over screaming your opinion from the nearest crowded square.

The Universe is Punishing you
                Please hear me when I say this: No. Simply no. Let’s look at this logically and work our way out from there.

The Universe set up conditions for you to want to do this thing, possibly for your entire life. The Universe showed you ways society was hurting or ways you can help people, gave you the skills and tools that would ultimately make you successful at it.

Then something happened: Became involved with a toxic person, grief and loss, car accident that totals your car and sends you to hospital. Could be literally anything. All because you dared be optimistic about the future. All because you wanted to add your own light into the world. The future the Universe showed you that you can have.

That logic is akin to a parent leaving out paint supplies when they know their child loves to paint, encourages the child to paint, and then locking them in a closet with no lights, pillows or blankets for painting. Any sane person would work to encourage the child to separate themselves from that parent’s worldview and take up painting again the minute they were free. No one would ever say “Well maybe it just means you shouldn’t paint.” So why are you saying it to yourself?

Alternative: The Universe is not Punishing you. You are Punishing you.

                This is not a statement of “You weren’t smiling through the pain enough.” Or that you deserved it. What happened is not an indictment of your character at all. Rather that, in a lot of cases we make choices reflective of our self-worth: we ignore red flags, we associate with the wrong people, we make unhealthy decisions be they physiological or psychological. We decide to eat poorly and never move our bodies or shut ourselves away inside and never experience fresh air.

And then out of false pride we keep doing those things because what will people say if we stopped? What if they knew the truth of what was really going on? Are they judging my choices by expressing legitimate concerns for my health? And that is not even covering the things that just happen.

We cannot account for the decision making of others who make bad decisions: Car accidents you could not have done anything to prevent, loss no one could have predicted. Even though these things happen to millions of people around the world every day, you find yourself believing that in your case and almost certainly in your case alone the Universe is punishing you for some thought crime or non-offense you committed eons ago if you have a cogent reason at all. The Universe isn’t punishing you, you are punishing you and then telling the universe to make it bigger.

If anything, the Universe cares about you as one of its 7.2 billion children. Again, if it thinks about you at all.

                The Universe, if it is a living entity at all, is more like an Eldritch Being: A God of unknowable size and form whose will we mortals would never be able to understand. It would be like ants beginning to believe that humans are personally responsible for their specific ant well-beings. An ant could never understand the will of a human and even if a human could determine the wishes of an ant, any interference in ant’s life would have massive and chaotic repercussion that would lead the ant to believe the human has a magnifying glass aimed specifically at them.

So instead, do as ants do: Work toward your goal, build so much around it that your will cannot possibly be mistaken for anything else. But work to understand where your priorities are and what may be in your way. Also, caterpillars dissolve entirely in their cocoons before they become butterflies. They lose their corporeal shape and gain one entirely foreign to them.

Not every ending is a sign the universe wants you to fail. Some endings, some dissolutions are completely necessary for you to enter the next phase of your life. Parts of your old life may have to die for the new one to be reborn. But you do have control over which ones you fight to carry with you into the next phase of your life. My only request, friend, is that your decision is made in love of yourself and the life you hope to lead and not obligation to a past that no longer aligns to you or that life.