The word is non-deterministic and imo when good or bad things happen there is no reason or plan with your prosperity in mind. We can draw and extrapolate meaning from events retroactively but it does not give any weight to this ‘reason’ people tell me about. This is just pattern recognition and correlation does not mean causation. The world and universe is random and good/ bad things happen without digression. The only thing we know for sure is that we can control how we react and respond to events in our life.
Edit: Spelling
Edit edit: There seems to be some confusion. I am not a college freshman taking philosophy 101. I didn’t think this mattered but I heard someone tell me this when I was complaining about life situations and it made me think about it.
My main complaint with this belief is that the phrase “everything happens for a reason” implies to me that there is some sort of plan. For example, a personal example for me is I was struggling to land a first job after college and after a few interviews I landed one. During the rejection I kept hearing “everything happens for a reason” I don’t think it does. That phrase is normally tied to some sort of divine or universal plan as if it was “not meant to be” I didn’t get the job because of lack of experience and poor answers to their questions and not because of some plan or ‘best for me scenario’.
The universe not caring part of my post refers to the fact that terrible things often happen to good people and there is no karma system dictating that. Conversely, great things happen to terrible people. There are still consequences to actions, but at any point in time a hurricane could come and wipe out your house. Was there a reason for that? (When I say reason it’s in reference to your life path and not the events that lead to the hurricane and you living there.) Some might say the reason you lost everything is that moving to a different place might set you on a path to meet your soul mate, or you move in with family and rekindle a new life-long relationship with you parents. Or maybe living there was not good for you and this was the push you needed. I don’t believe that there is a plan, or reason, that things occur, but we can adjust how we react to what happens and try to make the best of our situation.