Random

by Alan Barasky

As I blew my horn at the minivan cutting me off so that it could navigate from the left lane to the exit in the 20 feet that remained available to it, I noticed its bumper sticker flashing by: “S--t happens.” And to push aside the homicidal thoughts directed at the minivan’s driver, I thought instead, “Is life really that random?”

Some other guy always wins the lottery. Some other guy’s team always wins the championship (some other guy who doesn’t live in my home town of Cleveland, that is. No champions there since 1964). Some other guy even wins the NCAA pool every year. But if life were truly random, wouldn’t I get to be that other guy once in a while?

Of course, I’m happy to leave some things to that other guy. I’ve never had a bird poop on my head, punctured a tire in a pothole or gotten hit by lightning. The other guy caught all of those – poor schnook.

So why does that other guy have all the luck – good or bad? Is life really governed by the laws of probability? With apologies to my old statistics professors, that is a particularly depressing thought. Much as I like stumbling through probabilistic brain teasers, our existence has to have more of a foundation than that – doesn’t it?

Georges Duhamel, a French author, once wrote, “I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world.” But perhaps that absurdity is the key. Perhaps God was invented by man solely because the prospect of no higher power, no coherent plan governing the human condition was just too unbearable for our distant ancestors to contemplate. And succeeding generations, after quickly checking their options, said, “Yep, me too. I’m a believer.”

Atheists must be the bravest people on the planet because they really believe that the only ones keeping things going are me and that other guy. Me and the schnook? That would be like getting out of bed in the middle of the night when you are six years old, walking into your parents’ bedroom and discovering that they aren’t there. And you realize that not only aren’t they there that night, they have never been there. There isn’t even a bed.