Why Me?

When I am working with out-of-state clients and they ask me how I like living in San Diego, I frequently say that every time I head home I feel like I am going on vacation. Not bad. But hell came to paradise this past week. The high winds literally created firestorms. Like rain blowing sideways in a hurricane, we had blowing rivers of flaming embers just overwhelm our community. 1800 homes were burned to the ground. My family was lucky. We lost nothing. But so many others, including some friends, lost nearly all of their possessions.

San Diego is one of those communities where the vast majority of the residents have chosen to live. Most of us love it so much we feel lucky and blessed. We feel we have a special lifestyle that gives us a happiness advantage in life. But tragedy is not confined to any geography (as the tsunami in Thailand reminds us). And tragedies always bring us the “Why me?” question. In many cases entire neighborhoods burned. In others only a few houses on a block were destroyed. So, “Why me?” This is one of the big human questions. It applies to all the things we value that “burn down” in our lives. The unexpected car crash, a serious illness, the death of a child, an unwanted divorce are all “why me” moments.

Most of us walk around under the illusion of control. We think if we’re careful and smart nothing bad will happen. Or we believe the Just-World Theory that if we are good….if we obey the rules and keep our conscience clean, then God or the universe will keep us safe from being smacked by troubles we don’t deserve. But it doesn’t work that way. Bad people, even some real stinkers, get rich, are healthy, and live long selfish lives. And everyday some of the kindest most faithful generous people are told they have cancer or that a drunk driver killed their child or that their house burnt down. It seems unfair. But that’s only because we think we should be able to control all the bad things from happening to us and the people we love. But obviously we can’t. And maybe that’s for a reason.

Having recently been through a decade of serious challenges and grief, I’ve come to believe that we live in the best possible world. If there could be less uncontrollable suffering, there would be. We don’t control nature or the random acts of others’ violence and irresponsibility. What we can control is thought and will. How we think about what happens and what we do about it.  This is our opportunity to become more than programmed lab rats.

Perhaps it’s not so much that everything happens for a reason, as if some mean-spirited god is teaching us a lesson like an abusive parent. But rather we can make whatever happens meaningful if we choose to. What if the point of life is not material comfort but spiritual wisdom? What if the only thing we take with us is our own character? What if what really matters is not the big things but the small things? What if after our physical life ends our inner being finds ourselves with others who are just like us? Who would we choose to become?

I have come to believe as writer Matthew Kelly has put it. Our universal purpose is to “become the best version of our self.” To me this means, express our highest talents, have the most joy, love as big as we can, sing our best song just to turn up the volume on the parts of ourselves we most respect. And times of undeserved tragedy are those times when we compose our best music. Nearly everything of value that I have learned first hand in life has come from failure, disappointment and even tragedy. And I have never been happier. Go figure.

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