That's what I was going to say too, a lot of things percieved as bad may be the tail end of something actually good. I always try to see the good in everything. Who knows maybe the fact that the mother trying to have the kid, maybe she herself was a miracle child that almost could not have lived or survived but she did and the drawback was that her genes were too tainted to have her own children which is why it took so much hard work to even have the one they had for a short time, but on the other hand at least she got to be a mom for a short time. There are plenty of ways to look at things, I know it's hard to see the positive when a person is hurting though.

That's a good way to see it too because maybe that child's death was a blessing for some other couple who's kid could use the organs or something. Everything happens for a reason is another way to see it too.

Here's something to consider:

Taken from this website here.

Just so we all know what we're reading.

If, as you say, you posed a question only to facilitate open discussion I see no reason at all to use specific details of a client.

You may have been raising a valid question and discussion point but IMO I think it was far too specific and so bordered on being unprofessional.

You could had done all what you set out to do without giving details like age of child, longevity of the IVF treatments etc, which would have protected your vulnerable clients.

So although I for one appreciate your explanation, I can also appreciate some peoples derision and cynicism to it.

Gal

Yeah no one would report something bad that happened to a serial killer or horrible person, plus evil people will not tell about the bad things as much because maybe they themselves feel they deserved it.

Well, just about everyone feels like they are a good person but these kinds of things have to happen to SOMEONE so by chance it happened to them. It's the world we live in. As long as theives exist, SOMEONE has to be their victims and most people are basically good so chances are more likely their victim will be a good person.

True.

That reminds me of the little saying that's got some truth to it that goes:

"It rains on the just and the unjust fella, but mostly on the just because the unjust steals the just's umbrella."

But things do just happen. There are more good people in the world than truely bad people so most bad things will happen to good people just by chance.

Does anyone over the age of 5 really believe that the world is divided into 'good people' and 'bad people'?

True, I totally believe in God, but God does not pro mise anyone a perfect life with no sadness or crisis. He's there to help and promises a better afterlife that's all.

You can't prove He exists and you can't prove He doesn't exist and for some they will rather choose to believe in Him than to not believe in Him just because you can't prove He exists. Maybe they feel that if they are wrong then they will never know it when they die because they will just be gone, but the non believer who's wrong will have all of eternity to lament the fact that he was wrong. So they choose to believe.

Also, actually some people can only move on when they believe that it was God's will for some unknown reason than for them to deal with that it was just random. It's easier for some to believe their loved one died for a divine purpose than because some dumb teenage robber shot & killed them for $10. I remember a study that was done that showed that people actually do better mentally after prayer just because of BELIEVING the prayer helped even if nothing changed same with the one being prayed FOR. Just the belief that the prayer would help actually improved their status. So a lot of people do NEED their belief in God to get through hardships, so don't knock it. If that's what will get them through it then so be it, better that than to have them depressed and suicidal. I believe in God and I believe in miracles but I also believe stuff just happen. Period. For no reason. God is not anyone's personal genie to just make all the bad in the world go away. And prayer does help even if it's just to make someone FEEL better mentally. Sometimes the answer to prayer can be a person being comforted through the bad time.

I just wrote that same poem in my post before reading your post. Hhaah!

Bad people really do exist, serial killers, murderers, etc. I think the majority are basically good people though.

Bad people....ask a Swiss about Hannibal. Their first thoughts won't be Silence of the Lambs.

I disagree.

Every one of us has the potential to be perfect, and every one of us has failed to achieve that perfection.

In that regard, I am no better than a serial killer or a murderer. They've done horrible things, and so have I.

If one accepts that nobody is perfect, or 'good' as the OP puts it, then one can more readily face the fact that bad things happen to all kinds of people, for reasons we can hardly begin to understand.

Some of those bad things are a consequence of our own folly. Some of them are a consequence of the selfish or malicious behaviour of others. Some of them are simply hard cheese.

But to make a false distinction between 'good people' and 'bad people' doesn't help to explain why these bad things happen. They just do. They always will.

It is our job to find ways to cope - whether by turning to God, turning to counsellors, or turning to brandy - not to worry ourselves over the reasons why we have been afflicted by misery when we are so 'good', while those people next door are so terribly 'bad'.

Yeah I think anyone who was a counseler and had to sit and hear bad stuff that happens to people every day, would need some counseling thierself! That's too much sadness and bad news from people that they have to hear every day, that would get to ANYONE after a while.

You cannot prove this assertion. God has explicitly promised me this "perfect life" you speak of.



These dastardly moral absolutes...if bad people do exist, then their conception of what is good or bad should ordinarily be different from that of those describing them as such, which in turn should negate their very existance.

Well, sometimes hubby says I'm bad and then I get spankings...

Er. I mean. Well.


In regards to the topic:
I have met enough "good" people who have done bad things and enough "bad" people who have done good things that I firmly believe that we collectively are a bunch of "okay" people.

Sometimes good things happen in our lives for no reason and sometimes bad. Sometimes these things happen because we are setting ourselves up for them... we've done enough things down a path that the ultimate result is good or bad. I think this is fairly rare though and very open to interpretation.

What I mean is this:
Someone goes to university, gets a degree and gets a very well paying job... at which said person works 60+ hr weeks and is often separated from family with very little time to make good friends.
Is this a good thing (hey, nice money, right?) or a bad thing?

Someone saves the life of an individual who later goes on to commit several crimes but who even later establishes a specialized care facility for folks who were victims of whatever it was that set him down the initial bad path.
Was saving the life good, or bad? Was the life saved good or bad?


I'm not a particularly "religious" person. I have faith. The faith I have tells me that each religion has some answers that make some darned good sense from a community standpoint... and some that are mystical and simply have to be taken on faith.

One of these things I believe (and have no idea what religion - if it is a specific one - it derives from) is that all life has meaning. It does not matter how long that life is lived, somehow, some way, that life was important.

I think that when tragedy strikes in our lives, such as a life being taken from us in one way or another, it is not because we are good or bad but because the person had fulfilled their destiny. It may be years before we ourselves discover in what way that life's destiny was meant to play a part in ours but I do think that is why.

Hi Tubbies-Mummy,

Back to the question ("Why me?") that you get from people wondering why destiny allowed a terrible thing to end in the heart of their lives...
I couldn't help remembering what a friend of mine answered me someday saying:

Bad things WILL happen on this planet and maybe those who get them are chosen because they are stronger to handle it than others around them... or maybe because they could do something good about it...

take the case of those parents. A couple in the heart of Europe losing a child to Cancer (very sad thing...) could maybe channel the pain of the loss by campaigning for Cancer research etc. When the same couple in Africa would not have the financial nor technological capability to do so.

The question “Why me” is a dead-end one. The thought of being chosen for a good cause could help those grieving to see life more positively.

OP, it is a hard situation. And many ways to look at it. I didn't want to contribute, I am not sure of my own stand on this nor how to diplomatically word it, but the thoughts are bugging me..I certainly feel bad for the folks, how attrocious. I think to make comments on this here is tricky as things get taken so absolutely, I wonder how truly inet comunication actually represents one's opinion, too.

You can look at it as was stated here many times - crap happens and to the good folks too. Their heart bleeds and yours does too, for them. People move on knowing there is randomness and they didn't do anything evil to "deserve" it, nor the poor little child.

I don't really buy into the good folk/bad folk/ karma thing. It is so relative.

When I went through terrible period, though, what helped me with grieving was looking at consequences and causation. I do not have a science fetish, I know sometimes there no cause, blah blah. Maybe. Maybe there is, though. What if this increase of reproductional troubles, years of hormonal treatments, IVF and all the ways humans are trying to change nature really backfires? Extensive and hard core reproductive help has risks, it hasn't been around long enough, anyways. Cancer is a mystery disease, we do not know how much we contribute to it, environmental triggers, hormons, genetics..What if old age and reproduction is not supposed to mix? I know one cannot possibly say this to your patients. Everybody "deserves" to have a child. Good folks, bad folks..What if nature sees it differently? I know this is such an unpopular way of thinking, and to think of it this way sounds cruel. I do not think the parents caused it in any way, just got me thinking. We actually know nothing of the reasons a child got leukemia, don't we. I am not a specialist.

I just think that catastrophies are many times not catastrophies, but consequences. And this is what is bugging me about "inexplicable" tragedies, I have a feeling our age will increasingly be marked by tragic health related events. And normally I am a slap-happy optimist.

This is a serious question; Should a Councillor have emotion when dealing with their clients?
I would have thought that this would be you taking your clients problems personally which I would have thought would be unadvised.

I also have to say that I personally think that there are too many Social Workers and Councillors.
Why is this so; with the generous welfare state, the fantastic education that everyone has now a days, the freely available information; why can people not cope?
A lot more children used to die unexpectedly with no explainable reason and people coped. There were wars, where people lost members of their families and there were not all these charities/councillors available?
Sometimes I get the impression that these Councillors and Social Workers have more problems in their heads than their clients and maybe they do these jobs because it actually makes them feel better about themselves seeing other people with more problems than themselves. I often think this is why English people love watching those sad depressing soaps like East-Enders becuase it makes them feel better about themselves.

I look at humans like a group of ants.
They are busy doing their thing, collecting food and breeding.
When we stand on them when they are coming out of a hole and crush them, we don't know if they were good ants or bad.
A catastrophie such as a land-slide doesn't select bad people, it just occurs.

I can see your point, but in defence of these people I must point to the strength of both family and religious faith in previous decades and centuries.

Families didn't tend to be quite as fragmented as they are these days, with the increase in mobility, the increasing number of divorces and children born to single mothers, and the growing number of independent retired people- social workers and counsellors take on many of the roles that previously would have been covered by members of the family (not always willingly, it must be noted).

Furthermore, in previous times, where belief in God and organised religion was stronger, people knew their place in the world: They might not like it, mind, but they knew where they stood, and understood that things were as they were, and that was the way it was meant to be. Freedom of thought has also led to a kind of rootlessness, which means that, rather than relying on the wisdom of an established order, we rely on our own personal understanding of the world to make sense of things. Where we are unable, we turn to others for help - such as counsellors.

The world is a different place and the old ways are gone. In many ways this is a good thing - I'm sure few of us would like to return to the days when mothers were forced to stay at home washing cloth nappies by hand all day, when old people had to stay in their children's houses because they couldn't afford to do otherwise, or when priests could abuse the goodwill of their parishioners with impunity - but there are disadvantages to this state of affairs, too. The vacuum left by the collapse of the old ways is now being filled by the state (represented by social workers) and entrepreneurs (counsellors).

Unless we are prepared to turn the clock back 60 years, we will just have to accept that that's the way things are now.

Why??

Thats a good question that I've always asked myself ever since I could start processing properly and logically.

After almost 2-3 decades, my answer is simply "sh!t happens, and for some ****ing cosmic reaons, the stars happened to allign". There is no explaination why and you will drive yourself bonkers trying to ask that question because no one will be there to answer. Regardless of whether you are a good person, go to church every Sunday, live the way of God, or go out every Friday night, shag everything in sight and have 3 illegitimate children, things happen to you.

The only answer that I've worked out is is to learn how to move on from there and apply those lessons in your journey through the rest of your life - that will help with your sanity.

Now where do I send my bill?