50 Wildly Unhelpful Pieces of Advice People Hear All the Time

The phrase, “Everything happens for a reason,” can be comforting, but it’s not a universal truth. Life’s randomness doesn’t always align with the idea of a grand design where every event has a purpose. Sometimes, the reason is as clear as day: a cause and effect, a decision and its consequences.

Other times, it’s just the roll of the dice—an unfortunate event, a twist of fate, or the chaos of human actions. Recognizing that not everything is preordained or serves a higher purpose can be unsettling, yet it’s also freeing. It means we can stop searching for the ‘why’ in every mishap and focus on what we can control: how we respond, recover, and move forward.