We’ve all heard people say “Why me?” when bad things happen.  I knew a man, however, who flipped that notion on its head and would say, “Why not me?” In other words, what makes me so special that I would be spared the full human experience, including suffering and heartache at times. 

The design of this world seems to have a key component, freedom. We are free to choose love or hate, right or wrong, life or death at times, and to take or shirk responsibility.  When choices are positive and the impact is good we feel all is right in the world.  Yet when the negative encroaches we can be surprised and moan, “Why me?”  We forget that with all the luxuries of freedom comes the high cost of chaos.  I call this the spin-off of free will.  It’s ripple effect is a mystery, but the pain remains precise. 

The bottom line is this. We cannot have the best in life without being vulnerable to the worst. We can’t love without surrendering our heart, and it may be broken.  We cannot move about the earth without encountering struggles or bumping into hardships.  We cannot live without inevitably dying.  As a philosophy teacher once told me, our Creator must have valued love so much as to allow all the rest.  In the end, it appears, love is worth it. 

We get to walk on this planet such a short while, and as Tennyson’s old saying goes, "'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”  For those of us who have experienced any kind of loss, at least we know we have truly lived and experienced, even if only briefly, the best there is to know this side of heaven. 

May you be inspired!