Symbols And Events

"I know this sounds strange, but he has to live," my mom remarked to me the other day regarding our injured kitten. "It's not just about him. I don't know why that is."
"Is it because so many people told us to put him down?"
"Probably, yes."
I felt it too: The cat had become a symbol of my values and beliefs. If he lived, I was right; if he died, I was wrong. If I was so sure of myself and the rightness of what I was doing, I wondered, why did I still need to be vindicated?
I wanted to save him through the Power Of Atheism: No prayer, no looking to a god, just hard work, research, intuition and determination. As ridiculous as it seemed even to myself, it was still "me vs. God" (a mentality I thought I had grown out of in my teens, as I became more skeptical).
What is wrong with me? I wondered. Why do I have to be proven right? And most of all, what do I do if he dies?
Maybe you should realize that not everything says something about you as a person or about your choices, the wiser, calmer side of me thought. You're not to blame for everything. Sometimes things just happen.
Of course. Things just happen. So simple, so obvious, and yet so hard to accept. When everything is either from God or Satan, and when an all-powerful deity either does everything or lets everything happen, nothing can "just happen." When people don't want to be or feel helpless, and when society is addicted to stories with a hero and a villain (as this article from Cracked.com so aptly demonstrates)...sometimes you become the villain. Sometimes you end up blaming yourself.
What happens does not always determine whether you are good or bad. It does not always incriminate or acquit others either.

I stroke his soft fur back and forth, enjoying the vibrations of his purring. He is still alive. And knowing this simple truth eases my burden considerably.
Events do not determine what kind of person I am.
I do.

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