What If…Your Life Is Conspiring For You?

Apr 6

I have recently learned this term, “Pronoia”.

Pronoia is the belief that the universe, and everything that happens in your life, is happening for you, instead of against you. It is essentially the counterpart to paranoia.

I bet to many, the idea of pronoia can feel fantastical, lofty, idealistic and unrealistic. Ask me a few years ago and I would have said the same. Ask me on a bad day and I might still agree, however, I have come to believe there is a real logic in it.

Logic?

Yes. I’ll get to it, I promise, but first some background.

I grew up in the Hindu religion, and since I was young, I questioned everything. Religion often asks you to have “faith” but that wasn’t for me; my belief system was science, and I needed to understand the how and the why of everything.

If you have heard anything about Hindu religion, you have probably heard of the concept of Karma (from the Sanskrit word karman, meaning “action” or “deed”) referring to the universal law of cause and effect. This law states that every action—good or bad—has consequences, which may manifest immediately or in the future, even in future lifetimes.

The idea that every action has a reaction, as well as direct or indirect consequences, is logical to me. What you do has impact. No problem there. It was the “future lifetimes” and the reverse engineering piece of karma that sat less well; the idea that whatever is happening in our lives right now, is a consequence of our past actions, including actions from lifetimes before. It wasn’t the idea of multiple lifetimes per se, that left me incensed, it was the logic that what happens to us in our current lives, is destined. Pre-written.

When I was twelve years old, I remember arguing with my mother’s guru (spiritual teacher; the equivalent of a priest but for Hindu religion and philosophy), completely confounded by the idea that if everything in our lives was already destined, if we had no agency or control over what happens to us, what is the point of trying to do anything, what was the point of life itself?

I don’t remember the answer the guru gave, but I know it left me unsatisfied, and unconvinced.

Many decades later, I still do not have the answer to the reality of Karma or multiple lifetimes. These things are unknowable to someone who is a mere human. But I do know actions have consequences and I also know there are things which happen to us that we have simply no control over (destined or not).

I also know we do have agency, even in uncontrollable circumstances. We have agency in how we react, and what we do with what life throws our way. Even if that agency is confined simply to the story we tell ourselves about what and why something happened.

This brings me back to pronoia versus paranoia. Pronoia, like paranoia is just a story we tell ourselves, either interpreting the “what” and the “why” as happening for us, or against us.

Do I have proof that the universe conspires for me as opposed to against me?

No, that is another unknowable.

I do know, however, that what I believe colors my way forward.

I lived out much of my earlier life with a paranoia mindset, a sense of unfairness and loss, deciding the challenging circumstances of my youth defined who I was and limited who I could be. And because I believed it, they did.

Looking back now, I can see that every strength I have, was also because of the challenges I experienced. I would not be who I am, without that struggle. I also know that when I look at my life though a lens of unfairness and loss my perception for what’s possible for me shrinks. As does my sense of agency over my own life.

When, however, I see the same history as a training ground for some of the strengths I have been able to build, possibilities for who I am and what I can be seem to open. I am left with gratitude and a sense of being empowered, and with that, the energy to face whatever else is to come. It feels like the growth and freedom Viktor Frankl alluded to:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Viktor Frankl

I am not saying bad things don’t happen.

Horrific, unfair things happen… all the time.

And the pain can break you.

I do not believe everything has a “silver lining.”

… But time does its work.

We cannot tell where an experience will lead.

Sometimes we have no idea how we will get over a heartloss.

… But time does its work.

And in that work is the possibility for us to strengthen.

“Lie at the heart of the emotion, time
Has its own work to do.”

These words from a poem by Patrick Kavanagh gave me an answer I needed for the logic of pronoia.

Remember, I promised the logic?

Whether or not it is true that the world or universe conspires for us, believing it does creates a path forward that will become for us. What we believe, becomes.

When we enter that space between stimulus and response with pronoia, our responses will be ones, as time does its work, that move us toward our own growth and freedom.