It's put up or shut up time.

What I mean is that I firmly adhere to the stance that everything happens for a reason - even if it doesn't seem apparent at the time.

Which doesn't mean that, when terrible things happen to me, I walk around gleefully saying "It's alright. It'll all work out in the end."

Yeah, right.

If I had that power, it would have made all my breakups far easier than they were.

But even during the most trying events in my years, somewhere deep,deep in the back of my head, I had this mantra:

"Have faith, Keryanna. The universe has purpose."

But this belief - time and time again - is tested. Global events not withstanding, it's the personal difficulties that really push my limits of faith.

Last month, a friend of ours went missing. He was 21 years old. Still just a boy, I think. Teetering on the verge of becoming a man. He was away at a military college studying to be an officer. He and his girlfriend were studying for mid-terms in his dorm room. She fell asleep at 1am. When she woke up at 5am, he was gone.

About a week and half ago, they found his body in a lake beside his college.

Nobody knows what happened. Everyone says he was a great guy full of potential. Easy going and popular. Hardworking and stalwart. Not the kind of person who winds up dead in a lake at 21.

And, yeah, I know that often we make saints of people when they die - but, I know this family or at least some of the people in this family - and they are just really, really good people.

Things like this shouldn't happen to really, really good people.

But they do. Over and over again. It's enough to make me question the very fabric that holds me together. The little light that flickers inside of me when the days are dark and nights are incredibly lonely.

I think there are fundamental questions of our existence: "Is there order in the universe? Is there justice? Or are we trying to make sense of something nonsensicial to make ourselves feel better?"

I can't tell you how often I ask myself those questions. When someone I trusted betrayed me. Or someone I loved hurt me. When the whole world seemed to be going mad and taking me right along with it.

That's when those particular questions come blazingly to the forefront. Honestly, yes, I want a safety-net. I want God or Johova or Allah or Bob Marley - whoever the hell is in charge - to come down in a burning bush and tell me directly and without ambiguity:

"Don't worry, child. Everything's going to be okay."

But, aside from saints, martyrs and mental patients, this rarely occurs.

So, I'm left to sort things out on my own.

But without concrete answers to anchor me down, it can often feel like I'm just fumbling in the dark. Without knowing even some basic truths, how can I be sure I'm on the right path? That I'm believing in something meaningful?

The short of it is: I don't. I can't guarantee that the universe has purpose. Hell, I can't even guarantee that I'll be alive tomorrow.

But maybe that's the point. That there are no guarantees. There is the chance that something absolutely horrible will happen to you today. Without rhyme or reason. But there is also the chance that something glorious will happen to you as well. Without rhyme or reason.

But these extreme events are an anomaly in the scope of daily existence. Despite what the the nightly news leads you to believe.

As much as I want guarantees, if I had one it would eliminate one very important variable: Free Will.

If I knew for certain how my life would end up - then that would mean that my choices were just an illusion ... and that I really had no control over my direction. It would mean that my life has just been a charade.

I can't accept that.

So, I believe that the universe has purpose. But I believe that my purpose is guided by my choices.

It doesn't matter what great status fate has in store for me when I'm thirty ... if I put a bullet in my brain today, I can safely assume that I would never achieve my potential. Fate's not big with the resurrecting. Jesus kinda played that one out.

So what about the ten year old girl who gets raped on her way home from school? Or the family killed by a drunk driver on their way to grandma's? Or a twenty-one year old boy minding his business who winds up dead in a lake?

That's where it gets a little sticky. Not only do I have free will - but so does everyone else in the world. And some people choose to make very bad choices that can destroy other people's lives.

And sometimes, just by pure happenstance, freak things occur. A meteor falls from earth right onto your house. You're born with no limbs. You get a rare, incurable cancer that will kill you before your twenty.

Or, if you're like me, your parents die within eight months of each other in completely unrelated causes. That's pretty damn freaky.

It's a very hard pill for me to swallow ... but I can't assume the laws of the universe only pertain to me. Everyone gets to choose. Every action we take has consequences - whether we see them readily or not. Each person and thing on this earth is constantly creating a ripple effect just by its very existence.

It's all very complex. But very simple at the same time.

Yeah, it's true that you might - by some random act of chance - get killed tomorrow. So, why not smoke all the cigarettes, drink all the vodka, and fuck all the people that you can now - in this moment - because you can't guarantee you'll get another.

Believe me, I get the "Carpe Diem" thing completely. But - what happens if you don't die tomorrow? It's far more likely that a random act of chance will not take your life - but, judging by your choices, lung cancer, liver disease or AIDS will.

For every good and honest person who suffers out of no fault of their own - there are a million more people who bring suffering onto themselves because of their own actions.

So, yes, the universe does have purpose. But the source of that purpose isn't in some deity or on some godly celestial plane - but right here within us.

We create our future one moment at a time.

It's not a guarantee and it's no burning bush - but, then again, I'm no Moses either.

Rest in peace, Joe. Say hi to my mom and dad for me. They've been expecting you.

last - next