Why Not Me?

I once overheard a conversation between two people, a man and a woman, talking about a mutual friend who had recently died of cancer. 

It was clear that the man had been in deep intimate relationship with the dying friend through the ending stages of their friend’s death. While the woman had been supportive from afar, and therefore inquiring about how the dying friend’s spirits were over the course of the illness.  In other words, how did she handle the process dying?

It was such a strange dialogue to listen in on that felt sort of voyeuristic and wrong, but since we were sharing the same space (and I was completely intrigued to hear the answer) I eavesdropped on to how the man responded to the holiest of questions: how did this friend face her own mortality?

And the answer was: with humility, grace, nobility and love. What a combination!

The man explained with a story.  

He said he was at their friend’s house one day expressing his grief to her. He spoke about his sense of anger that she could get sick with cancer when she had lived such a healthy lifestyle and had contributed so much in her career and relationships. He emphasized that she was so young and had so much life left to live, that the whole thing just seemed so unfair.  “Why you?” he said.

But the friend apparently did not get swept away in this man’s grief, anger, or her own poor me’s. Instead, she simply said, “Why not me?”

I honestly don’t remember what was said after those 3 words, “why not me?” because those words just stopped me right in my tracks. It was like god, or my own wise mind, had reached right down inside of me and said: “Pause here. Pay attention to what is happening.  Take this moment inside of you.”

It’s like I was intended to contemplate what those words meant; to that friend and to me. 

Afterward, I decided she meant that we are all in this together.  We are all in the being-human club. And unlike most clubs, this one is totally inclusive rather than exclusive.  Which means, every human being is entitled to the costs andthe benefits of this big ‘ol family that is totally egalitarian.  Nobody is more special or more loved than anybody else. And, nobody is protected from life’s imperfections, tragedies and ultimate mortality- from the Queen of England to the homeless orphan in India.

This may sound strange, but I found this idea comforting. It gave me a sense of interconnection and humbling reality acceptance that was grounding in nature.

Now, fast forward 6 months to yesterday when I received confirmation that a beloved of mine has Alzheimer’s Disease, and up pop those words again in my mind “why not me?”

When I notice those words echoing inside me, I think: “here I have come full circle.”  But then I realize, “no, this feels different.”

Though I feel sad, incredibly sad actually, I am not finding myself engaging in the type of resisting reality thought patterns that in years past I would have very easily slipped into. 

“It’s not fair.”

“Why does it have to be this way?”

“Why him?”

“What if…”

Etc. Etc.

I’m also not engaging in resisting reality behavior like problem solving or trying to control others: “Do this! Do that!”

What I do notice, alongside the sadness, is a new feeling of compassion and interconnection.

Of course I have experienced compassion before, but not generally when I’m upset about something in myown life.  

I very easily feel compassion in my work as a social worker and psychotherapist.  I feel it in my role as a wife, mother, and friend. I feel it in daily activities as simple as driving down the street through the city I work in when I see women and children leaving the local homeless shelter.  In all of these situations I feel enormous compassion towards others.

It has been hard though, when I feel like something of mine is being taken from me. For example, 

·        if my health is declining,

·        if my beloved’s health is declining,

·        if I am losing my job or my car or my things,

·        if an individual is walking away from our relationship.

Historically, in circumstances of personal loss and grief I have had little experience with compassion and even less of interconnection.

Yet yesterday and today I find myself thinking:

“How many other people are hearing the news of a loved one’s diagnosis?”

“How many other people are going through loss right now and I don’t even know it?

And the weird part is, I’m finding these thoughts comforting, not depressing.  

I’m also finding it beneficial to think of myself, or maybe more accurately to feelmyself, as part of the being-human club.  Rather than standing outside the club with my nose pressed against the window looking in, I feel like I am part of something larger. I feel like I am not alone.

What is the possible explanation for this change? 

Well, the honest answer is: I don’t know.  But my best guess, and I’m actually a pretty good guesser, is my regular practice of meditation, spiritual reading, prayer and yoga.

I’ve heard people say that they feel like a poem or a song or a painting is “working on” them, and it took me a long time to figure that phrase out. I’d think: “what does it mean to be ‘worked on?” “And how can an inanimate object or an idea possibly ‘work on’ us?” 

When I put this phrase in the context of contemplative practices though, it made perfect sense to me.  Meditation is “working on” me. Prayer is “working on” me. Yoga is “working on” me. 

Like a piece of sharp glass in the ocean gradually morphs into sea glass, so too does compassion and interconnectedness grow inside of us as we engage in contemplative practices.  There is no one day that the glass goes from being sharp to smooth, it is a seamless process that is invisible to the naked eye and too nuanced for our light speed human sense of time and change.

Of course science and the work of neuroscientists like Richard Davidson atThe Center for Investigating Healthy Minds in Wisconsin is beginning to corroborate what long-term practitioners have taught and shared for thousands of years of human history in regards to the fruits of contemplative practices like compassion.  And for that, I am very grateful because science is the first language of most westerners.

But just for today, I think I’m going to avoid the western scientific translation of truth, and I’ll just stick with what I know inside my heart.  Which is: Just for today, why not me?

How do you embody the words “why not me?”