Pure Coincidence

I write nearly all my blurbs on a laptop that travels all around the house: the bathroom, the sitting room, the porch, and the living room are the most commonly visited locales. From time to time I use one of those little portable drive doohickies, and transfer the recently-written blurbs to my desktop computer, where I store them and from where I send them to you.

This afternoon I wrote a blurb that I decided I would send out today, so I did the little transfer, and when I pulled the little porta-drive (it has a proper name; I can’t think of it) from the USB port on my computer, my monitor went blank, and I heard a few funny noises.

I immediately assumed the same thing that I think you would have assumed: I somehow blew up my computer by pulling this thing out of my computer. It so happened that the funny noises had to do with my uninterrupted power supply (into which I apparently do not have a monitor plugged) and the entire neighborhood was without power for about two minutes, but my first response to the situation was to assume that I had caused the problem.

Maybe you can already see where I’m going with this, but I’m going there, anyway. Psychologists have noticed a phenomenon like this. Suppose a couple gets a divorce. Their seven-year-old child automatically assumes it was his fault. If he would just have been a better kid, the parents would have stayed together. There is a name for this (can’t remember it, either) but it is descriptive of an underlying belief that everything that goes wrong is somehow my fault. "I am the center of the universe. Everything that happens is caused by me." Fact is, me pulling the little drive out of my computer had nothing at all to do with my monitor going dead. It was pure coincidence. But just try convincing me …

If you want my opinion, this is one of the most difficult things to see clearly. Your friend or spouse isn’t talking to you … you assume it’s something you did or said. Your friend or spouse is in a bad mood ’ you assume it’s something you did or said. Some unpleasant thing happens in your life … you assume it’s because of something you did or said or thought. But is it? That’s what’s so tricky. A lot of what happens to us is related to our thoughts and words and actions. But not all of it is. Unquestionably, what we say and do effects the people around us, and yet we do not carry the ultimate responsibility for their thoughts, words, or actions.

Where does my responsibility begin and end? Where does my influence begin and end? What does God actually expect of me? Only to do justice, love mercy, and walk with Him in humility. "Good" and "bad" stuff happens. Only God can fix it, no matter whose fault it is.

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