I was married for over six years. Now, more than six years after my wife’s passing, I have been widowed longer than I was married. That kind of milestone brings a quiet reckoning. You begin to count time differently, not by anniversaries, but by how long you have been trying to feel normal again.

Widowhood is not just grief. It is paperwork, silence, and learning to cook for one while the world pairs off as if it were a team sport. People ask if you are dating again when you are still figuring out how to be alone without feeling unfinished.

Dating feels like a comedy sketch written by someone who has never lost anything. On dating apps, you scroll past profiles that say “no drama” while carrying a chapter that ended too soon. You are not bitter. You are just tired of pretending it makes sense.

Losing someone I loved is already a heavy burden. When efforts to rebuild fall flat, it feels like the universe is indifferent, leaving me to navigate without a map. This led me to question whether life follows a grand design or is simply a series of unpredictable events.

Ecclesiastes 9, with its emphasis on time and chance, presents a stark view of life’s uncertainty. Solomon writes, “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong… but time and chance happen to them all.” This challenges the comforting notion that effort or virtue guarantees reward. Instead, it suggests that life unfolds in ways that defy prediction or fairness.

I found an interesting parallel between this ancient reflection and the mathematical concept of factorials. Factorials begin with a simple premise: multiplying a sequence of descending integers. But the results escalate rapidly. For example, 3! is only 6, while 10! is already 3,628,800. Each added variable explodes the number of possible outcomes. It is a vivid illustration of how complexity grows from simplicity.

Similarly, time and chance operate like hidden variables in the equation of life. A single decision, a missed train, a chance encounter, each can branch into countless consequences. The web of outcomes becomes so intricate that it is impossible to trace or control. Just as factorials reveal how quickly systems become unmanageable, Solomon’s words remind us that life is not a linear path but a chaotic lattice of possibilities.

This realization was both sobering and strangely liberating. It helped me accept that not everything is meant to be understood or mastered. Instead of seeking control, I began to seek meaning, not in outcomes but in intentions. That shift became a quiet turning point in how I approached grief, purpose, and the future.

In the wake of loss, I found myself grappling with one of the oldest and most haunting questions: Why does God allow bad things to happen? If there is a divine plan, why does it seem to include so much suffering? I searched scripture, prayed, and listened for answers, but what I found was silence. The randomness described in Ecclesiastes only amplified my confusion. If time and chance govern all, then where is the justice, the mercy, the meaning? Was this absence of intervention a form of divine mystery, or simply evidence of a world left to its own devices? These questions did not lead me to certainty, but they did lead me to honesty. I stopped pretending I understood, and in that surrender, I began to look elsewhere for grounding.

This ultimately led me to embrace humanism, which values reason, ethics, and human potential over divine influence. Humanism does not necessarily reject Christianity outright, but rather shifts the focus while leaving room for personal interpretations of divinity. Wanting to put humanist principles into action, I chose to become an organ donor, a meaningful step toward living out that philosophy.

Moving forward after loss takes immense effort. When things refuse to fall into place, hope can feel like it is slipping away. The struggle weighs on me. Feeling stuck is one of the hardest emotions to endure, especially when I am trying and getting nowhere. Grief did not just take her. It took the version of me that existed before. What remains is someone quieter, more deliberate, and perhaps more attuned to the fragility of joy.

Hopefully, stagnation is not the end of the story, just a frustrating chapter. I do not know where this path leads, but I have begun laying stones, small intentions and quiet hopes. Maybe one day, they will form a trail toward something resembling peace.