a little philosophy for thought

So I believe that everything happens for a reason. I also believe in some form of karma, or if you do something good you'll get something good in return. I'm officially Catholic, but almost completely non-practicing. I believe in God, I believe in evolution.

Now that that is out of the way....I was wondering, am I the type of person with an external locus of control? (psyc people will know what I'm talking about here) I really pride myself on my independence in life, but I depend on things like fate to get me through life. Well I guess I can't really "depend" on fate, but it seems like that is what I do sometimes.

Let's say my car completely broke down, totally unfixable (not too far from the truth as of right now). I wouldn't wallow around in pity and say I don't have money for a new car or how am I gonna get to work or blah blah, I'd just say "it'll get better" and I'll do what I can do make it happen. Now this may just make me a big fan of denial (which I know I am) but too many coincidences have happened to me to believe it is all chance. Also, I don't believe that if my car died I could just sit back and be like "okay I'm gonna win a new car tomorrow" and do nothing. I'd work my ass off to make sure I got a new car.

Also, if I give 10 dollars to the Hurricane Relief Fund, am I going to get something good in return? What if I give the money ONLY to get something good in return, then will it backfire? Then we get into questions of true altruism which I don't feel like getting into right now. Incidentally I did give 10 dollars to the Relief Fund, but it was because they were giving away cookies and I didn't have anything smaller. I'm not sure if anything good came back to me or not, but I can at least say that nothing bad has happened yet.

There are some people I know that never have things go their way. Every single thing that happens to these people are bad, and they seem to never be able to get on their feet. I doubt that these people would agree with me about the "everything will work out for the best" stuff. But myself, I've yet to face a really big hardship.

Maybe it's all instinct. Animals have amazing instinctual abilities. Butterflies for instance. Monarchs migrate from the north and east down to to California and Mexico to stay warm. They go back home when the weather is good again, lay eggs, and die. So now there are all these eggs with no parents, and they know on instinct to migrate to California and Mexico for winter. Amazing.

Well, humans basically are animals, came from animals, share many evolutionary traits with animals. I'd love to be able to know how big of a role instinct plays in life. How do people just know that something is going to be the right decision down the road? And does this mean that the future is already planned out like a fork where if you pick right, you travel down the good road, and if you pick wrong, you travel down the bad road? The animals that have bad instinctual abilities get weeded out faster, so having it must produce good results.

I've written already about choosing a college, choosing certain friends, boyfriends, jobs, on and on, and how it's all led me to the place I'm at now. Well of course it's gonna lead me to the place I'm at now, but am I in the place I'm supposed to be in right now? I guess the answer is if I am happy where I'm at, then yes. That is assuming everyone's goal in life is to be happy. But why shouldn't it be? There can be nothing better than being happy, if you're talking about all areas of life.

I still also want to know why I get certain feelings that something I'm doing is going to turn out great. The strongest lately has been deciding to talk to Andrew for the first time, and bringing my car to Morris Auto (who ended up being the only car place IN ROCHESTER who gave me exactly what I wanted, for cheap). Is it instinct? Is it pure luck? Is it all bullshit and nothing in life means anything at all? Maybe I search for answers to make life more meaningful, more important, more exciting. But I think everyone does that in one way or another.

Blame Joe for this discussion, he is getting me into the tv show "Lost" which looks like an awesome show that I just happened to miss every previous episode of. Anyone who watches Lost and knows who John Locke is (not the really olden days author, the character on the show) will know where this discussion came from.

And as always, thanks for listening to my ramblings.

---Edit: it's about a half hour later, I just turned on the tv, and the first thing that was on was a story about a guy that was supposed to get on a plane to go to NYC awhile ago, got a horrible feeling that something bad was going to happen, got physically sick and refused to board the plane. Because he didn't take the trip, he didn't close out his stocks in the world trade center building when he was supposed to, and he didn't die on Sept. 11th.

Also he won 41 million dollars by closing his eyes, and letting the numbers jump out at him...a man with good instincts? Or was it just luck....---