Making Sense Of Life Through Reincarnation
There's a metaphysical claim about reincarnation: that we have a non-physical essence (aka a soul) that is reborn in new physical forms after our deaths. I don't think this is the kind of claim you can argue about successfully in a blogpost. What I want to advocate for is the personal benefit of taking (a certain kind of) reincarnation as a model of the world, a poetic belief if you will, whether or not you believe it literally.
To me, reincarnation gives an unusually motivating explanation and action-plan for everyday trials and troubles. I'm sure this has limits; I've been very fortunate lately and I don't doubt there are quantities of suffering at which I would not personally find the idea of reincarnation much succor. But for the kinds of medium-sized troubles that every life contains – rejections, reversals, disappointments, distress – I find the notion that "this soul is on earth right now in part to learn a lesson from this trouble" much more satisfying (and more productive) than the alternatives.[^1]
First, it implies a serious responsibility to learn from things that happen. So this is different from the claim/philosophy that "sometimes seemingly-bad things are a blessing in disguise"; rather, you have a kind of duty/purpose to learn from bad things and figure out some way that you can improve based on them. It centres learning and improving as a life purpose.
This is especially true for things where you keep running into "the same kind of trouble." Again, I think there are limits to this and I don't think this belief would be helpful or fruitful in every version of this experience. But at the same time, I think most of us are blind in certain ways to our own part in certain kinds of recurring medium-sized troubles in our life, and I think the framing that "maybe I chose this life specifically because I needed to learn about this big recurring challenge in it" is helpful for making that feel like an opportunity rather than a curse.
Another benefit of reincarnation-thinking is that it highlights the ways that there are probably other angles to everything that seems obvious t0 you, and that part of your goal in this life should be to try to understand things from those other perspectives. I think it makes it easier to perform that mental maneuver beloved of Dale Carnegie and various others of understanding that if you were in some other person's shoes, you would do as they did.
I previously found it hard to believe this because, you know, when someone is being an asshole I think they're being an asshole, and have every opportunity not to be an asshole, same as I do. But I think the reincarnation model can provide some kind of grip on an idea that's a little different, namely: if, in a previous life, you were too strict, and unsympathetic to the loose ones in your life, you may have now chosen a life where you'd be too loose, and chafe against the strictures of the strict ones. I find this somehow much more helpful in fostering empathy.
I can't pretend I have achieved anything like sanguinity in this life, myself, so who am I to talk.[^2] Still, I'm much closer to inner peace with this belief than without it. And I think you can get some of the benefit of this belief just by holding the model, whether or not you literally believe it.
[^1]: I think this may be the Ancient Greek model of reincarnation, though I've only ever got that nth hand and I haven't read serious scholarship on it
[^2]: (though I suspect that's one thing I'm here to learn, and that I am driven towards people who do have it, to learn from them).