Everything happens for a reason. What does that even mean? To me, it means that day by day anything and everything that happens in life makes us who we are. When I say everything, I really do mean everything. I am even talking about things no one thinks about, like going out to eat or driving to a friend’s house. On your way to your friend’s house, did you ever think about why you were going there (besides the fact that they invited you)? Why did you choose to go out to eat at McDonald’s and not Red Lobster? Some call it predisposition, others call it destiny, but I call it fate. Your fate is everything that is supposed to happen to you in your life until you die. Therefore, whether you realize it or not, going to McDonald’s is as much a part of your fate as is randomly running into an old acquaintance. But just because all of these things happen to you isn’t a reason to use bad behavior. As difficult as it may be for some people to grasp, even poor choices happen for a reason. Bad decisions help us learn and they help us choose better options for the future. I grew up in an environment where I was taught what was right and wrong, so when something wrong was proposed to me, I would decide against it. But if I chose to do something stupid like ride my bike without knee pads, I would learn my lesson from falling off and getting hurt. This is a situation where the cliche applies. I didn’t wear my knee pads for a reason — to fall off of my bike and get hurt so I would never want that to happen to me again. As we get older, we get hurt in so many different ways. People will say things about you, you will say things about them and you really do find out who your friends are. However, this isn’t the end of the world. If you lose a friend, you still have another one, and if you don’t, then you will make a new one. We have our entire lives ahead of us, and things will get better. In the meantime, just remember that all of the bad things happen for a reason, and that’s what shapes us into the people we are. If I didn’t go to Freedom, I don’t know where I would be right now. I was meant to live here, I was meant to go to school here and I was meant to have the friends that I have. I was meant to be the person I am because all of the things before now have “happened for a reason.”