Why me ?

Many of us get this question as life unfolds. Why me? The intensity of this question becomes more when something unsettling happens. Is there something that can really settle? What is settlement? Is a good education to earn a good job and good money settlement? How good is good? I, sort of, get on an assembly line of life. After education, its job/business, then family, ageing parents, school going children, routine illnesses like BP, sugar, hypertension. If this is what our settled life is then I have serious questions (and you too have them.) This when unsettles in form of situations like a failure to crack-in into a new job, or distrust in business, your child’s tantrums, adolescent’s (mis)behaviour at home, a marital disturbance, a job loss or an angioplasty is when I ask a question “why me?”

That was only one dimension of “why me?” The other is, do I get this question when “all izzz well”? I.e. when existence showers me with good job, a good spouse, good food…? Have we asked this question “why me?” then? We say, I have struggled to get all this and I deserve it. The earlier “why me?” is disturbing, this one isn’t.

If I can look at “why me?” from both these angles with same intensity, it will bring about an equanimity in the perception. This is as against holding on to former “why me?” where actually its not “why me?” but “why not s/he?” or latter “I deserve it.” If there are more people saying “why me?” for same reason, they immediately bond. They all sympathize, cry and form an organization of “why me’s” and move together to find an answer.

The former “why me?” creates a vacuum and the latter one is an accumulation. We search for words that fill up the vacuum (by logic) like ‘I am good, still..’ or like. Mind manages this by ‘obvious’ blame game of using ‘other’ as the target. A material mind will rationalize this by saying ‘A better tomorrow is waiting for you.’ A philosophical mind will say ‘Existence knows better than you’ and fill up the vacuum. Both are escapes of confronting from the reality of “what is.”

The moment I see that there is no point in escaping and covering up the reality and learn to “be” the same question “why me?” can become the most out-of-mind experience with a drop of tear or two and a smile and you may again ask “why me?”; a different-why-me that mind can’t think of!