Why is it that so many of us mentally interesting people live lives of one tragedy after another? Not only the same bad decisions made over and over, but external forces beyond our control seemingly arrayed against us? How about some theorizing?

• Karma. Some cosmic force punishing us for bad deeds in a past life. Or maybe it’s us punishing ourselves–always walking into bad situations because we think we deserve them. In any case, each instance is an opportunity to atone for sins by responding with grace and patience (see Job [not that his situation was karmic; it was just random, based on a bet between God and the devil]).
• Electromagnetic Interference. My daughter has a theory that people with Dissociative Identity Disorder generate excessive electromagnetic energy in their brains–the consequence of having so many “people” inhabiting the same neurological space–causing electric and electronic things to go haywire and possibly affecting the moods and attitudes of other bodies. Could this be a source of all the “bad luck”? Could it apply to other neuro atypicals aside from multiples?
• The Call of the Wounded. Carl Jung had the idea that trauma results in what he called complexes–thoughts, behaviors, feelings that respond to current situations as though they were the original trauma, in ways that don’t fit with our normal responses. I had a Jungian therapist once who said I entered into chaotic relationships with sick people so often because “the wounds call to each other.” Each triggering of a complex brings an opportunity to heal the wound, although the more unconscious we are of the complex, the more likely it is that we’ll just have the same unhealthy response again.
• Preparation for Sainthood. Suffering purifies, this argument goes. Enough bad shit happens to you, it practically guarantees entry into Heaven.
• The Perpetuation of the Class System. Mental illness is statistically more likely for the poor, who have fewer resources to compensate for problems like this. Like many other of life’s problems, it is in the interest of the rich that the poor suffer indignities that keep them poor, so that those who enjoy the fruits of the labor of the working class may continue to do so.
• Random, Senseless Violence. Of course, there is the possibility that there is absolutely no reason for anything, that justice is distributed randomly and bad things happen to good people just because. The second law of thermodynamics in action: closed systems tend toward entropy. Any attempt to make meaning and order out of this chaos is just thumbsucking or whistling in the dark. But buck up! Your luck could change! Just enlist a magic spell or carry a rabbit’s foot or a four-leaf clover or something. Whistle in the dark. It could help. It couldn’t hurt.