The Dandelion Theory of Life

I recently had lunch with an acquaintance who'd caught some bad breaks. He was down but not out, and was consoling himself in part with a phrase I often hear:

"Well, everything happens for a reason."

Does it really? That kind of thought can seem comforting in the face of otherwise inexplicable bad fortune. But it bothers me because I hear people saying it all the time, and I can't agree that it's an effective way to explain the complete and utter randomness and absurdity of life as I see it. Nor is it a way to explain any kind of fortune, either good and bad.

Everything happens for a reason? Then what was the reason my father died in a plane crash when I was four years old?

At the time, I was told by well-meaning relatives that God needed him for something more important. That's nice spiritual poetry, I suppose, but it's not a reason that I could understand, then or now. God has a reason, but other than that we got nothing, kid. Trying to relate to a God like that is like walking into an Advanced Particle Physics Class midway through the semester at Harvard University and expecting to get anything out of it.

Instead, I have my "dandelion" theory about life that I've been working at and nurturing all these years. It comes from the childhood experience of picking those white fluffy dandelion seed heads and blowing the seeds off so that their little natural parachutes carry them to wherever the wind takes them.

Some are lucky and find a good spot with just the right shade and water and soil to take root and grow into next year's dandelions. Others drift about and land on inhospitable places like rocks or parking lots or whatever, where they fail to take root at all and just crumble to dust.

And still others find themselves in fairly unpromising places: bad dirt, no sun, whatever. And yet they make a go of it, and perhaps get as far as producing a respectable yellow flower head, only to have it get eaten by a passing deer before it has a chance to turn into a seed head. (This process happens overnight, by the way. Life is like that, too.)

And that, it seems to me, is the condition that most of us face in our own lives. We are asked to do our best in imperfect conditions, and there's no guarantee that the expected results will happen.

Okay, so here's the context. Each spring, at least where I live, there are more than enough dandelions producing more than enough seed heads so that at least some seeds have a chance to be carried by their little natural parachutes to a place where conditions will be just right for them to go all the way in terms of fulfilling their destiny. But it's completely by chance, with no moral component: no seed has any chance of making any choices that make it more worthy than another. They all just drift about and then do the best they can.

So it's all about the numbers, really—with enough dandelions and enough seed heads, there's bound to be a few that turn out to be champions, at least in terms of what a dandelion is supposed to be. And in human life, given enough of us, there's bound to be a few of us that survive the traumas of childhood and adolescence and the economy and education and so many possible uninformed or bad decisions and personality traits, and in spite of it all we become the best bricklayer in town or the person who writes the Great American Novel.

Does any of it happen for a reason? Not that I can tell, though the utter randomness of life can certainly generate some surprising and unintended consequences. But does that make for an actual reason for things to happen? Is what happens to us tied to some kind of cosmic logic or fate? Only if we're prepared to make a "leap of faith," as they put it, which I can't bring myself to do.

Where does that leave this former altar boy? Well, instead of cathedrals and churches, perhaps casinos are a more appropriate place for worship. Stripped to their basics, they celebrate the same principles which seem to govern life and success and happiness and fulfillment. You might just get lucky. Plus there's low-priced drinks and food, which is nice, and in my book beats out the free wine and wafers I remember getting, one meager serving per visitor.

So, in terms of coping with life's realities, rather than bringing your children to some church and having them attend "Sunday school," wouldn't it instead be more instructive to bring them to places like the Mohegan Sun resort in Connecticut or to the Bellagio in Las Vegas, and have them learn the ins and outs of blackjack and how to play the roulette wheel?

I don't know. But all of this leads me to a larger question of the consequences of a random world. If the world is fundamentally without sense, where no kind of "reason" really guides anything and we're all in a sort of cosmic pinball machine, then what do I use to guide my own actions and decisions and behavior and conduct?

This question forms the basic premise of 'Crimes and Misdemeanors' (1989), perhaps Woody Allen's best film, which depicts a world where bad deeds are not punished in any obvious ways, where justice is not done, and where an act as unthinkable as having another person murdered brings not consequences but prosperity. In such a world, what standard can people rely on to make their own decisions?

I can't answer that just yet, and perhaps will never be able to. It's really the ultimate paradox, isn't it? The more we seek the answer to such a question, the farther away the answer becomes. This is at the root of my appreciation of paradoxes as perhaps the most poetic expression of the life condition, especially those that happen accidentally, such as the fuel tanker truck by the side of the road because it ran out of gas. There's your spirituality, right there!

But I think good-naturedly dismissing the idea that everything happens for a reason, and instead looking at the example before us of dandelions and so many other natural processes all around us, is a good start at clearing the decks for a discussion that's honest, if ultimately incomplete.