Why Bad Things Happen To Good People

(In order to keep things simple, I’m referring to the title of this series as WBTHTGP.

In this age of Twitter and TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) I need to be as succinct as possible – hope you don’t mind.)

The first thing we need to address when attempting to answer THE BIG QUESTION of “why do bad things happen to good people?” is, “are you sure it’s bad?”

Very often, something that seems to be bad at the time often turns out to be a real blessing.

The breakdown of a marriage (or intimate relationship), going bankrupt, losing your job, missing that opportunity you were so sure was your destiny are all things where we feel that it’s all bad.

And yet, some time later (it may be almost immediate or perhaps years later), we look back and see that this was one of the best things that could have happened to us.

Here’s a short story as an example:
A man had applied for a job as a cleaner at Microsoft.

He went through the screening process successfully and was at the final interview with the HR person, who realised the Email question on his application was empty, and so he asked the man for his email address.

“I don’t have an email address” was the reply, to which the HR officer responded; “No email, I can’t give you a job here unless you have an email address.”

The man was devastated and left wondering what he was going to do, in order to feed, clothe and house himself.

He had a few coins in his pocket, his last bit of cash, and bought a few pieces of fruit.

He then sold these to some passers-by, making a little profit.

He repeated this process and was quite successful.

So successful, in fact, that soon he was able to buy his own fruit cart, which then grew into a shop, then multiple shops and eventually he was the owner of shopping malls.

One day, when he was looking to expand his chain of malls into the overseas market, he was negotiating the purchase of property and so needed a new lawyer.

At the end of the meeting, the lawyer said, “Give me your email address and I’ll send you the contracts.”

To which he replied; “I don’t have an email address.”

The young lawyer, astounded, said, “You’ve done all this and you don’t have an email address. Imagine what you could be with one.”

TThe man responded, “I’d be a cleaner at Microsoft.”

While this is a simple story, it illustrates the point that; often things we see as bad are actually the motivators or opportunities we need to enable us to do or become something or someone who is much happier and fulfilled than if we had continued along the road we were on originally.

In the play, Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, Hamlet says; “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”.

So when we attempt to answer our big question, we first need to look carefully at what we consider “bad” – is it really?

I’ll wrap up this section with another story.

In Jewish history, there was a famous Rabbi called Nachum Ish Gum Zu.

He had this name because his reaction to EVERYTHING that happened was “Gum Zu L’Tova” – “This too is for the good.”

In his final days, he was totally incapacitated, to the extent that he couldn’t move his arms or legs.

The feet of his bed were placed in bowls of water to prevent insects crawling up onto him, as he had no way of brushing them away.

When his students saw him they exclaimed; “Woe to us that we see you in this condition.”

He replied; “Woe to me if you don’t see me in this condition.”

He understood that because we are spiritual beings, the things that happen to us in the physical/mundane/material world are minor compared with our existence in the spiritual world.

In the following chapters, we’ll be looking at our human experience from a spiritual and energetic perspective, which I hope will provide the understanding that things which appear bad to us are, in fact, for our great benefit and are really great gifts.

A final word – at this point I’m not saying that nothing bad ever happens.

My point is – we need to make sure we’re seeing these things from the correct perspective before we can make that judgement call.