Have You Found the Answer to "Why Me?"
You can stop looking. Here it is.
I’m taking zero credit for what I’m about to share with you. I came across it in one of my daily meditations by Jay Shetty, last week and it’s too good not to share.
This was just one of his regular lessons but I found it so relevant to why we’re all here.
It’s centered around one question that we all may have asked ourselves at some point during our grief journey.
Why Me?
It begins with an old parable about a small family living in a modest home in a village in India. The ending is pure gold.
One day, after a long, dry summer there was a thunderstorm. Lightning struck a tree which then caught fire and fell onto the family’s house, destroying it.
Fortunately, the family survived but they lacked the money to rebuild their home as it was. The mother was distraught.
“Why me?” she asked, looking up at the sky.
Days went by. Then weeks, and months. A year later the mother was still bitter and angry.
“Why me?” she demanded over and over again.
Finally, her husband encouraged her to ask the local guru for help. So she went to the guru and asked her familiar question.
“Why me? I didn’t deserve this. My family didn’t deserve this. But if you can tell me why, I might be able to find peace and move on.”
The guru nodded.
“I can help you,” he said. “You must go collect a handful of mustard seeds from the people in your village. But you must collect them ONLY from people who have never experienced grief or tragedy.”
The woman nodded and went off to collect the seeds.
A week later, she came back to the guru empty-handed. She could not find a single home that was untouched by tragedy or grief.
The guru asked her, “Do you still want me to try and heal you?”
“No,” the woman said. “Since my neighbors shared their stories and we cried together I found that I have stopped wondering why me.”
For months after I lost my son, I felt more alone than I’ve ever felt in my life.
Logically, I knew I wasn’t the only person who’d ever lost a child but emotionally, I felt like a hobo traveling an abandoned, dirt road completely on my own.
Then I began writing about my feelings and experiences. That’s where I found most of you.
I also found a peer support group in my city which is where I found many other mothers on the same journey.
And that’s also when I stopped asking myself, “Why me?” Because it wasn’t just me anymore. I wasn’t even close to being alone.
Asking that question is the ultimate resistance to accepting what is. It represents a story we’re telling ourselves - the story that we’re alone in our struggles.
By recognizing that suffering is part of the human experience, we can soften it.
When we release ourselves from the story that our suffering is unique it frees us to go through the process of accepting what is, allowing ourselves to move forward.
Acceptance isn’t my favorite word for loss. I prefer to use the phrase, “Coming to terms.”
In any case, how have you learned to accept or come to terms with the loss you’ve experienced?
Thank you for this - my dad passed away from Covid and I find myself resentful that the pandemic has affected me this way while so many others have been unscathed. It isn't a helpful thought process so I've been trying to navigate through it the best way possible - this resonated with me.
Being hit with a devastating loss, especially suddenly, is bound to make us feel cast out from the "normal" world, isolated, apart, and somehow abnormal. But that's because daily life, in order to function, requires a certain facade, a certain distancing from the stark fact that loss and grief are inevitable if we live for any length of time (and if we don't, we'll be the cause of grief). It does help when you can get to the point where you understand that loss is normal, indeed universal. Another, perhaps harsher but ultimately bracing answer to the question "Why me?" that I've heard quoted is, "Why not you?"