Maybe everything’s not arbitrary. Maybe everything happens for a reason. Not the way people say that though. Not some good, holy, pre-ordained sort of reason. Just, maybe, everything’s not arbitrary. Maybe it all happens the way it always had to happen. Like dominoes falling. Not good, not bad, just happening, one after another.

Dominoes I can understand. I can see how they will fall and how they have fallen. My mind wraps around them easily. But this existence I’m in. I don’t understand any of it. Not very well anyway. But I’m human. So I feel like more than just another domino – even though I doubt I am.

Maybe there is no such thing as luck. But I can’t see the dominoes falling, so I call it luck because I can’t understand it; can’t change it. Good luck. Bad luck. Is that all it ever boils down to? People say “I did this” or “I did that” like they made it happen. But maybe we’re just dominoes. Nobody ever earned anything. Your parents were poor, or wealthy; or you were talented or a dud; or had good luck, or bad; but you didn’t make you who you are – doing the things you do. You and I are just happening.

It’s strange. I can believe this to be true, and I still feel like I’m not just a domino. I feel like I’m making choices.

Why do I demean the domino? What’s wrong with events unfolding with infinite predictability? Why do I desire my perception of free will to be true? Maybe I’m afraid that my suffering has been arbitrary and my accomplishments hollow. What good is a win that could never have been a loss?

At any rate, all of this mental gymnastics is really for nothing. Either I have free will or I don’t, and I hold the unshakable perception that I do have free will. It’s uncomfortable when my sense of reason and my sense of reality don’t match up.