The Reason

There is a school of thought that maintains that everything that happens, happens for a reason. No matter how horrible, no matter how painful, no matter how apparently senseless, everything happens for a reason that will someday become clear; possibly in this life, more likely in the next.

And so, you ask, what’s the reason for World War II? Or cancer? Or Columbine? Or Vesuvius? Or Hitler? And even if there was one, how could it possibly justify the expenditure of horror?

And they answer: It is Ineffable.

And you say: That’s a little bit of a dodge, though, isn’t it? I mean, you’re saying that there is an answer, but we can’t possibly know what it is, because it’s ineffable. And even if we did know what it is, we couldn’t possibly understand it. Because it’s ineffable. That really isn’t an answer at all.

And they say: You must trust in the will of [insert deity/lifeforce/universal principle here].

And you say: Nothing. Because you’ve stalked off, annoyed.

But here’s the problem: some things do happen for a reason. Take my crippling inability to carry on a normal conversation with people I don’t know very well, for example. Somewhere around my tenth birthday, the conversation conduits in my brain began to shut down, one by one: they clogged up, broke in half, withered away, and I haven’t been able to put together two coherent words since. Whenever someone comes up to me and tries to start up a conversation, my mind goes into something like anaphylactic shock: it shudders, curls up into a spongy little ball, and begins to emit small meep meep noises. My eyes go wide, my face settles into one of those “Deer Caught in Headlights While Receiving Barium Enema” expressions, my eyelids twitch, and my forehead begin to ripple and jump like a flesh blanket stretched over tiny frogs.

Inevitably, at some point, the other person pauses, expecting me to fill in my end of the conversation. There is a silence, punctuated by muffled meeps from inside my skull. My eyes, dry now from all the not-blinking, begin to move back and forth, looking for the thing I’m supposed to say next, as if it’s some sort of creature that’s managed to slip its leash.

The silence continues. My conversation organ, a dessicated ruin of a thing shaped like a glob of melted rubber, hauls itself to its feet and casts about for an appropriate thing to say. It finds nothing, of course, and soon, having been informed by various sensory organs that the silence out there is becoming Very Awkward, sends up the only thing it can think of, which is usually something like “Ferret bones evacuate perestroyka,” or “Gleep! The udder!” or “Nnnnnngngnnngn.” Which is to say, something surreal, alarming, and apropos to nothing.

Eventually, the other person goes away, my brain expands back to its normal size, and I spend the next couple of hours being appalled at myself.

But it turns out that this clogged aphasia has a Purpose. There is a Reason. This afternoon, I had a short conversation with a friend who I don’t really see very often. The conversation did not go well. In fact, it was so mortifying, so horrible, so beyond awkward that I’ve just spent the last hour trying to stick my tongue in the garbage disposal. Sadly, I don’t quite have the necessary reach, so the tongue survives, curled up inside my mouth, back among the wisdom teeth, with strict instructions not to move lest it die a horrible death in a glass of very small piranas.

And that’s the awful truth: I was not meant to have conversations with people. At any moment, I’m not just liable but likely to say something annoying, insensitive, inappropriate, or brain-crushingly stupid. And so the Creator, having spotted this deficiency in the karmic soup destined to become me, added a dash of superglue to seal the passageways of speech, thus saving me from perpetual mortification. Not a curse, then. A Blessing.

Of course, the Creator could have just as easily corrected the problem, I suppose. But he chose not to.

I don’t know why.

It’s Ineffable.