The Particular and the Universal

What happens, happens because it is meant to happen.

Imagine a puzzle shaped by the flow of a person’s life and their decisions, an order that constantly changes through the moments in which it brushes against the lives of others. When a person chooses one possibility out of countless others, the pieces shift.

But this is not like the puzzles we know. Every choice changes the picture. And each time the picture is rebuilt, it still forms a meaningful image. This is called particular will.

Then there are the moments when certain pieces change direction. We did not choose them, we did not ask for them, we did not want them. But the wind of life placed them before us, and the flow of events brought us there. This is universal will. And yet, somehow, a meaningful picture emerges. This is fate.

But because we are only one piece within that whole, we can see only the part of the picture that is reflected to us. The places we cannot see frighten us. That is why we sometimes call pain injustice, lack unfairness, and loss a mistake. Because the great picture can only be seen from above, while we are looking at the puzzle from the back.

The hardest part begins when we question divine justice. Sometimes we see it, sometimes we sense it, but most of the time our understanding remains incomplete. And exactly here, faith comes into play.

Some of us believe that justice is not limited to this world, while others believe it must be built here. One of us surrenders to faith, the other struggles. Because whether you believe or not, even when a voice inside us says, “It should not have been this way,” somewhere the feeling remains that there is a reason for it being this way.

And sometimes this feeling is where faith begins. Or for someone who does not believe at all, it is where the search for meaning and truth begins.

That is why no one knows what the picture will look like when this ever changing puzzle is completed according to every possibility, every choice, and every act of will. But deep down, we all feel that this picture cannot be meaningless. And perhaps this is more precious than anything else.