Does The Universe give you what you need?
On the literally false, but metaphorically true
Everything happens for a reason.
The universe gives you what you need.
I have heard these aphorisms uttered with certainty, as if the listener must agree, because how could you not. You probably have as well.
And yet I take both of them to be definitively untrue.
That said, I also take each of them to have an interpretation that is useful. This is in the vein of cultural beliefs often being “literally false, metaphorically true.” In the Culture and Consciousness chapter of A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century, Bret and I explore this in some depth, including in this brief excerpt:
Consider farmers in highland Guatemala who have a long-standing tradition to both plant and harvest crops only when the moon is full. This, they say, allows the plants to grow stronger and resist insect damage. What possible protective capacity could the phase of the moon have on crop health? Presumably none. But the phase of the moon can synchronize the farmers. A full moon is effectively a giant sky clock, a keeper of time that everyone in the region can see. If all farmers in the region believe that a full moon has salutary effects on their individual crops, they will likely restrict planting and harvesting to the full moon— and this will, in fact, benefit everyone’s crops, just not for the reason the farmers believe. A belief in the power of the moon to directly affect crops effectively satiates predators1, by concentrating the harvest into brief periods, during which time crop predators cannot eat all of everyone’s crops.
In that spirit:
Everything does not happen for a reason, nor is the universe listening (indeed, as I have explicitly argued elsewhere—the universe is neither hostile to nor ecstatic about you; the truth, which is perhaps more terrifying, is that it is indifferent). But acting as if these aphorisms are true may well benefit you.
Believing that everything happens for a reason may keep a person motivated to look for value in even the worst experiences, and to, hopefully, thus mitigate the awfulness. No matter how terrible an incident was—the end of a relationship, the death of a parent, even trauma or abuse or assault—is there something positive that occurred downstream, or that you forced to occur because, in the wake of the awful, you had no choice—which can be viewed as positive? There are many brutally honest famous stories like this—I am thinking specifically of the young neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi’s “When Breath Becomes Air,” his book about finding meaning in and after his cancer diagnosis, his book that was published posthumously after he died of the very same cancer2. If Kalanithi could find meaning in a bitter diagnosis, which would strip him from his beloved family and career, surely we can all attempt to do so. Perhaps that is made easier by believing that everything happens for a reason.
Similarly, believing that the universe is listening to you, is watching out for you sufficiently that it has the capacity to give you what you need—this belief has the potential to organize you, the actor, such that you figure out what it is that you need, which in turn positions you to make that happen.
In 1966, the psychologist Julian Rotter first formalized the concept of locus of control, building on ideas that he had been developing for over a decade3. The kernel of the idea is this: When an event is perceived by a person to be outside of his ability to control it—due to “luck, chance, fate, [being] under the control of powerful others, or…unpredictable because of the great complexity of the forces surrounding him”—that reflects a belief in an external locus of control. When, on the other hand, a person believes that an outcome is “contingent upon his own behavior or his own relatively permanent characteristics,” this reflects a belief in an internal locus of control.
“The universe gives you what you need” is an aphorism framed by an external locus of control. No action is required or expected on the individual’s part. But I argue that believing this aphorism has the potential to help a person create a world in which they get what they need, by tricking their own psychology. That is, a belief in this particular external locus of control can prompt a change in behavior such that the locus of control becomes internal. If you believe that the universe will give you what you need, you may be on the lookout for precisely the thing that you need, and in so doing be effectively working on the problem yourself, helping to solve your own problem.
I am not certain of this conclusion, and it is perhaps a strange argument to be making given that I myself do not think in terms of the universe watching out for me. But I was prompted to think on this this week while doing exercises that have been recommended by a crew of excellent physical and manual therapists, chiropractors, and osteopaths. The recommendations began after I fully ruptured my left Achilles tendon playing ultimate frisbee on a cold February beach in 2015, and expanded and diversified in the wake of a fateful boat accident in Galápagos, in 2016.
By many estimates, that accident might well have rendered me immobile for life. Various doctors gave me conflicting prognoses, but as I came to know each of them individually, and they recognized that I was far more likely to under- than over- estimate what I was experiencing, they were less and less surprised as more and more injury revealed itself, more systems turned out to be out of whack, more functionality lost, or so I was told. For a while, every time I showed up to another appointment, the prognoses got more dire. I never felt pain associated with some of my most obvious injuries; but as some healed, others began to surface.
The state stepped in, briefly, to pay for everything, including recommended treatments and surgery. I rejected their surgery, though, and some of their treatments, and was held in some suspicion by doing so. My coverage was soon terminated. But throughout it all I knew some things for sure: I was utterly wrecked. And I did not accept that as my fate. I would not be wrecked for life. Just as I had refused death while trapped under a boat in the Galápagos, I refused a permanently physically curtailed life now. Among many other things that I did in my acts of refusal, I walked. I walked and I walked and I walked. When I went into some of my many appointments, I was told that walking might be forever out of my reach, or at least forever difficult, or forever curtailed. But I pushed the limits of what I could do, and asked nobody’s permission but my own. If I had accepted the prognoses I received then, I might not be walking now.
The universe most definitely did not give me what I needed. But in the aftermath of the accident, I saw what I felt that I needed—full mobility, as soon as possible, and continuing up to the moment of my death. I never stopped pursuing it. In pursuing it, I found a deep and rich set of traditions, and practitioners, which and who have helped me return to health and mobility. Now, in my early 50s, with a history of traumatic injury, I could easily be impaired, decrepit. I could feel old, and I could therefore act old, and that would reinforce the feeling. But I do not.
At any age and for nearly any human, pushing yourself to move in ways you do not think you can is a way of asking the universe for what you need. The universe in this case is your own self, so you are asking, and hopefully discovering, what it is that you need. In return, it—the universe, as voiced in your body—responds, and if you are listening, if you have the patience and calm and integrity to listen to the feedback that it gives you, you can act on that. Is choosing to act in ways that enhance your own capacity the “universe giving you what you need”? Personally, I don’t frame it that way. Personally, I prefer the internal locus of control version: I need to be observant enough, and receptive enough, to understand what I am seeing and feeling and intuiting and knowing, and then act on it. And when I do, well, I can bend this little part of the universe to my will.
However you get there, bending the universe to your will so that you can be your best and most complete self, while taking out nobody else in the process—that is the goal. And we can all aspire to it.
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Morales and Perfecto 2000. Traditional knowledge and pest management in the Guatemalan highlands. Agriculture and Human Values, 17(1): 49-63.
Kalanithi’s essay, “Before I Go,” published in Stanford Medicine, is an inspiring introduction to his life and work.
Rotter, J.B., 1966. Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological monographs: General and applied, 80(1): 1-28.
I was always partial to the Stoic take. We cannot control what happens to us, we can only control how we respond to it. When we have the choice to be graceful or resentful in the face of something that feels unfair, choosing the latter only makes things worse for ourselves and those around us. There is something powerful about learning this re-framing and applying it to everyday life. People will wonder how you are so positive all the time. How you always manage to see the silver lining. Meanwhile they are letting their days be ruined by a cold coffee at the drive-thru window.
We all have the power to choose gratitude and grace over resentment and misery. It is a shame we live in a world where people feel empowered by their misery. They do not realize they are enslaving themselves in it.
I am reminded of a passage from Is God A Taoist where God asks the author “Where does the you end and the rest of the universe begin?”. The play between the “me” and the “exterior” is a true mystery that appears to constantly be shifting.