What I was going to say before I got distracted by the idea of a cloaca (typical): I know what I don't believe, mainly "it all evens out in the end" and, relatedly, "everything happens for a reason." The idea of a linear, directed causality is too absurd for me to even consider, which in some ways might just be an act of man-brained closed-mindedness, but I do find it serves me. If I thought either the good things or the tremendously shit things that have happened to me in my life were some kind of narrative idea observed, condoned and administered by some kind of intelligence (active or passive; big-d Deity or "spiritual") I'd find the resulting paranoia and resentment so debilitating, I'd end up locked in my room for months. Chronic overthinking and spite don't seem like a natural pairing, but it's gotten me all the way to where I am today. I say that while blogging anonymously and mostly for free on the internet in 2024, so read that how you will.
What I'm saying is it's been an eventful 2024. I got COVID. I took some romantic chances (results TBD). I got a job offer (results TBD). A mixed bag, but I was on kind of a high off the last two things. Then my dumb car started sputtering if I hit the gas too hard or tried to go up a hill too fast. Was this the Universe* trying to "even things out" after hitting a little winning streak? But hang on, there was COVID at the beginning of this string of events, so is it even a streak? I mean, that's two good things sandwiched between two "bad" things, so maybe I just take my Spiritual-Ontological Equilibrium Hoagie and call it win-flavored draw?
But then within the car thing, that was a whole drama on its own. The first place I took it to said, since it came with no error codes or warning lights, they couldn't figure it out. They DID figure out a way to charge me $400 for a transmission fluid swap and tried to sell me tires I definitely don't need, but I drove (sputteringly) out of there with them telling me in concrete terms they were well and fully stumped, therefore it was probably a bigger transmission problem, which they couldn't fix anyway, best of luck, sir, we will be keeping your $400. The second place I took it to heard me describe the issue and said "that sounds like a transmission problem, we also don't do those, plus we can't work on your fancy exotic foreign car** anyway, shove off." So I said bad words on the defeated drive over to a randomly chosen transmission shop, resigned to the idea that this was going to cost like $8,000 for a new transmission.
You know what transmission shops don't want to do, though? Devote the expense and hours to putting in a transmission you don't need because it isn't the problem. Describing the issue, they were already skeptical. By the next day, we struck a deal: if I was willing to drive to a dealership to pick up four OEM spark plugs (to ensure we were using the right "exotic" parts), they'd put those in and see what's what. Turns out? That worked. It was another $400 total for the parts (hand delivered by me, I felt so important) and the labor. I've never been so happy to spend $400 in my whole life.
Overall? Out a total of about $800. But I didn't spend $8k. So did I save 90%? Or did I get half scammed by the first shop? WHERE IS THE GOD IN THIS EXPERIENCE? Or maybe, and hear me out: human high-brain jumble-heuristics making pictures and patterns out of what is, by any objective measure, a chaos of events entirely indifferent to any individual's existence one way or the other, let alone their feelings, or what is "good" for them?
I don't even know. I'm sometimes envious of the True Believers, they must feel such comfort knowing it's all someone watching literally everything they do, getting one of their kids into the college they wanted and giving their other kid face leukemia when they were six and still reaching the same conclusion of not only influence and presence but benevolence somehow. Not just that there's a secondary consciousness--an exalted uberconsciousness at that--at work, but that there's a plan in all of it...
But there's some comfort in the chaos model as well. It's hard to take things personally when they all go to shit if there's no personification behind any of the events anywhere, ever. I was going to say "I get my fair share of shit," but even that seems silly. Fair compared to what? And determined by whom? Maybe it's better to say "I seem to get a statistically non-abnormal complement of inconveniencing or upsetting circumstances, relative to the mean." It's not that sexy, but it makes me feel like the way atheists talk on the internet, which, now that I think about it, is confusing, emotionally.
I should point out that I also didn't mention that being without a car for most of a week meant relying on my kids to drive me places, which was a) nice as excuses to hang out with your adult children aren't always easy to come by but b) it gets expensive when you decide to pay them in food, however c) that just means more time to hang out and catch up while they eat. Hm. I feel like this little caveat/aside has gotten me farther from the answer, if anything.
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*I know it's a U, but we're using it with that big-d energy
**I love my little car, but if you go German-made, even if it was $23,000 brand new, shops still treat you like you're driving a cathedral organ or a giant town-square clock.
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