Don't think of a pink elephant.

Why must everything be for a purpose? If something unremarkable happens, chances are someone will give it a meaning for occurring. I don't mean how things happen or the series of events that lead to their happening, I mean the reason they happened. Like people saying that something happened because it was 'fate'. That word is used a little too loosely, don't you think?

This little philosophy, like many of my random snippets of thought, came from a book. What can I say, Jodi Picoult knows her stuff. In the book there is a conversation between a single mum who had apparently found love again, and another single mum who was extremely cynical on the whole concept of love.

The mum in love, I forget that characters name already, was saying that it was fate that she had met this new guy, I think his name was Eli or something. The cynic mum argued that she had probably thought her ex husband meeting her was fate too, at the time. She continued to say something along the lines of justifying why the marriage hadn't worked by saying 'it simply wasn't meant to be' even though it had been fate at one stage.

So does fate really exist or is it just a word used to make happiness a gift from the universe? Saying something is 'fate' or 'meant to be' could be said about anything.

"I ate some ice cream. It was fate."
"I saw a sea gull. It was fate."
"I forgot my lunch. It was fate."

Fate is like a conclusion drawn without the barest hint of evidence, like a detective arresting a murderer on a hunch. I think fate is either a simple statement told by people that need to justify their decent circumstances, or is just a word used for everything that happens. It happened so it was fate. Obviously, if this happened, something else can't possibly happen in its place. We all know that if time travel were possible the future travellers would have come back and told us already.

I think I'll finish this before I make less sense, if that were possible.

-Philosophical me.