Life Happens.

About the only, thing that's predictable about life is that it's unpredictable. Bad things happen to good people, interruptions compromise our best-laid plans, and experience falls short of expectations. But, like Job, we can learn an essential truth: Attitude is everything when the whole world seems a mystery.

TWO INCIDENTS SO EERILY similar had such different outcomes. A few weeks before Christmas last year, a relative of mine named Mary Jo was on her routine drive home on a busy suburban boulevard. But another driver approaching from the opposite direction swerved out of control and smashed into the driver's door of Mary Jo's car. She died, probably on impact, and she missed her youngest daughter's college graduation just two weeks away.

Two months later, a friend in another part of the same city also had his driver's door smacked by a careless driver. His sports utility vehicle rolled over, but he survived without a broken bone. After being treated for minor injuries at the hospital, he took a prominent place just two days later in the TWA Dome in downtown St. Louis, playing the organ at the Mass celebrated by Pope John Paul II.

I went to Mary Jo's funeral, and I also attended the papal Mass, spending a little time wondering why certain things happen. But overall, I find myself spending less time looking for answers to that powerful question, "Why?" I find it increasingly helpful to go down a different path.

I am reminded of a story told by Elie Wiesel, the concentration camp survivor who eventually won the Nobel Peace Prize. He recounts in his famous book Night that as a youngster, he asked a series of simple questions such as "Why do I pray? Why do I weep when I pray? Why do I live? Why do I breathe?" And he became ill at ease when his only answer was "I don't know. I don't know."

Then Wiesel found a "master" called Moshe the Beadle, who "explained to [him] with great insistence that every question possessed a power that does not lie in the answer." The big questions eventually get directed toward God, Moshe said, and we cannot understand the answers because "they come from the depths of the soul, and they stay there until death. You will find the true answers, Eliezer, only within yourself."

IF MOSHE IS CORRECT THAT THE BIG QUESTIONS eventually get directed toward God and the answers lie within ourselves, the understatement of the end of this century may be that too much cannot be said for learning to accept--with awe and wonderment--that daily living rarely goes along "the way things are supposed to be."

Our culture operates at a fast-food pace and has trained us poorly to deal with life's nuances. Four-in-a-row 29-second television commercials have become the metaphor of our times: four problems solved every two minutes we watch the tube! Most commercials conclude there is a quick solution to everything--our headaches (take Tylenol), our financial problems (call this 800-number), hair loss (order this wonder drug), or our craving for nicer furniture and vacations or cars (no down payment, low interest rates). We constantly hear about quick fixes for every pain and problem, emotional and material.

But in life the solutions to big problems rarely are simple.

I would guess that thousands of consultants in this country are making millions of dollars conducting time management seminars. They suggest we make little lists every day and then triumphantly place check marks by each item as the day goes along. Such lists have no escape clauses for the dozens of interruptions that occur every day. Interruptions, like imperfections, are just a part of life. Today's interruption, today's pain in the butt, today's "unpredictable" news may be the most predictable occurrence of the day.

Illnesses, mistakes, and varying degrees of incompetence pop up not because they are abnormal, but precisely because they are part of the human condition. We say freely that nobody's perfect--the Bible says bluntly that all have sinned--yet we live and gossip as if every imperfection we encounter is somehow a surprise.

So accepting the reality of the universality of human weakness and of our own weaknesses and wounds is important. But such acceptance does not mean we have to live with a passive resignation that we are little more than victims of our circumstances.

We can, instead, respond creatively and proactively to almost any situation. How instructive it is to look at the story of Job, a person of strong will who endured so many troubling situations, yet maintained hope. What an example he set by saying at the end of it all, "I have dealt with great things that I do not understand; things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know."

THERE ARE AT LEAST THREE WAYS I KNOW of to nudge away the temptation to give up and become bitter, angry, or cynical about our circumstances. These may not seem like new ideas, but they are becoming increasingly countercultural:

1. Be more patient, because life is hard. Patience may be the most countercultural virtue of our times in a society that deceptively teaches us we can have it all, now. We feel so much pressure to solve something today, to accomplish something today, and to expect others to get everything right today, too.

Patience allows us to remember that life includes nuances, complexity, and problems of such magnitude they never truly go away. Our culture has paid far too little attention to the importance of grieving, for example, at times of death and other forms of loss. And grieving takes time, the kind of time that bean counters would not consider "productive."

A friend stopped by my house unexpectedly one night. I hadn't seen him for years, but I knew that he had ended his career as a Protestant minister and had gone through a divorce. He showed up with his two children just to visit. He shared a bit of his story, and then said matter-of-factly he knew he would be facing a couple of tough years as he reorganized his life and found a new career.

A couple of years, indeed! Easy to say, but far more difficult to live one day at a time with the pain. By now he is remarried and has settled in another state, his home state. We usually hear from him at Christmas, and he's doing well. But he would not have reached this point had he not gone through the painful, patient process of accepting and truly internalizing how difficult life can be.

2. Forgive, and be prepared to forgive. Jesus knew exactly what he was doing when he told us to be willing to forgive somebody 490 times, to turn the other cheek. He knows we're vulnerable to repeating our own mistakes and to being hurt by others over and over the same way.

Forgiving is a wonderful way not only of healing a rift with another person, but of letting go of one's own anger at another person. Forgiving someone else is a gift to yourself as much as it is a gift to others. Forgiving the meanness, mistakes, and incompetence of others who wound us can be a most liberating experience--for us, not the other!

3. Lighten up and have hope. Ours is a culture of impatient whiners and complainers. By my unofficial count, nine people out of 10 see most glasses as half empty, not half full. They are quick to moan but slow to laugh and celebrate spontaneously. This makes it far more difficult to recognize the blessings and the small moments of joy that each day brings.

I am impressed by the small-town Illinois basketball coach whose girls' team won the state championship one year and then made it to the final eight the next year. Asked if he felt pressure to settle for nothing less than another championship, he replied, "Really, getting a trophy is not our goal. The idea of going up [to the state tournament] and winning would be great. But we're just playing basketball; that's all we're doing. It's not life or death."

What a wonderful perspective! All the forces of our culture try to teach us that losing, failures, disappointments, mistakes, and misfortunes are bad for us. That is a lie.

I like the attitude of Vaclav Havel, the poet who rose to the presidency of Czechoslovakia after the fall of the Soviet Union, only to see his country split in two. He has a good perspective on hope: "I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well," he once said. "Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart. Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the state of the world around you."

With that kind of hope, a person can learn the painful step of accepting life's circumstances without being overcome by them. Patience, forgiveness, and lightening our load will not cure everything, but that is precisely the point. Life is not so much about fixing every problem as it is experiencing the day's challenges and joys and sadnesses with a sense of mystery.

We should remind ourselves of what Moshe the Beadle told Elie Wiesel: The big questions eventually get directed toward God, who is eager to be in relationship with us. The yearning we feel to find a purpose for our lives and the disappointments we feel about life not turning out exactly as we had hoped are all related to a natural inclination to direct our lives, intentionally or not, toward a God who loves us. God is the father/mother of the prodigal son/daughter who patiently waits for us.

The voice of God deep within us reminds us that the answers to life's most perplexing questions ultimately rest within ourselves.

It all begins with acceptance. Life is so fragile. There is no way to predict exactly what will happen to us today.

But we do have control over the choices we make in response to today's "unexpected" occurrences. We can be patient and forgiving, and we can amuse ourselves with the fact that life, after all, isn't perfect. We have to learn to reject the liar who tempts us to feel lonely, rejected, and unworthy of love just because things rarely go according to somebody else's mistaken notion about the way life ought to be.

What wise things have you learned along the way that help you navigate life's many twists and turns? Share your stories and advice with other U.S. CATHOLIC readers by visiting our Web site at www.uscatholic.org and selecting "Message Pad" at the top. Then, go to "U.S. Catholic" and "Spirituality." Or e-mail Mary Lynn Hendrickson, spirituality editor, at [e-mail].

ED WOJCICKI lives in Springfield, Illinois, where he is publisher of Illinois Issues, a monthly magazine about government and politics.