Dr. Carolyn Lee reflects on a different cliché each week. Recently, in her blog “The Greatest of All Time,” she considers the acronym, G.O.A.T. This week Carolyn explores the cliché, why me?
Learn more about Dr. Carolyn Lee on her biography page or investigate 29 more clichés in her latest book, Keep Your Eye on the Ball And Other Clichès to Live By.
Why Me?
Last night I sat paralyzed in front of the television screen, watching horrifying images from the Israeli-Hamas war. There was a bullet-ridden body of a baby. There were families with what possessions they could carry making their way across the rubble of bombed out neighborhoods. There was a man whose head was swathed in bandages lying on the floor of a hospital that had run out of beds. There was a mother wailing over the body of her murdered son. There were hundreds of people stumbling along a road with nowhere to go. I finally couldn’t watch anymore. I went to bed, my warm, safe bed.
In the middle of the night, I got up and walked to the bathroom. The carpet was soft under my feet. Before I got back in bed, I drank water from a cup on my bedside table. This morning I got up, took a hot shower and washed my hair. I put on clean clothes. I walked into my kitchen and turned on the electric tea kettle. I cut up an orange. I put an English muffin in the toaster oven. I looked out the window. The sun was shining, and there were birds at the feeder. After breakfast, I got in my car and drove a few blocks to the grocery store. I walked through the produce section where there were piles of apples and bags of salad and bins of broccoli. I picked up an onion and a couple of sweet potatoes. I stopped at the dairy cases and selected a half-gallon of 1% milk and a carton of cottage cheese. I walked down the soft-drink aisle and saw that Diet Coke was on sale, so I put three six-packs in my cart. I paid for my groceries with cash. On my way home, I stopped by the ATM. I stuck my debit card in the slot and withdrew $200 in $20-bills.
A little later I went for a walk. It took me by Luther Lake, which is surrounded by lovely homes, some of which have private docks where party boats are moored. Noisy ducks and geese swam toward me, hoping, I guess, for some breadcrumbs. I saw people mowing their lawns, walking their dogs, weeding their flower gardens, checking their mailboxes, shooting baskets in the driveway. One house had a display of balloons announcing the birth of a baby girl. A lot of the houses displayed Halloween decorations: spiders and ghosts and witches. There were other walkers along the route I chose. Some of them were wearing Fit-Bits or Apple watches reminding them of the progress they were making toward their steps-goals. Most of them waved and said, “Good morning.”
From the middle of the night until the middle of the afternoon, the images I had seen on the evening news stayed on the screen of my mind. I could not stop thinking about the people I had seen, the people of Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza. Those people didn’t have bathrooms or carpets or warm beds or water or soap or clean clothes or electricity or tea bags or oranges or English muffins. They couldn’t look out their windows at green grass or birds at the feeder. They didn’t have cars or grocery stores. No apples or salad or broccoli or onions or sweet potatoes. They had no dairy products, no Diet Coke. They didn’t have debit cards or machines which provided them with instant cash. Their neighborhoods did not feature lovely homes or private docks. Those people weren’t tending to their lawns or walking their dogs. There were no balloons or decorations or people out jogging or getting in their steps. They weren’t listening to the sound of lawn mowers or noisy geese.
The haunting question I couldn’t stop asking was “Why me?” Why do I get to live comfortably, eat well and enjoy an environment that is quiet and safe? Why have I been spared the sound of bullets and bombs? Why is violence something I have never personally experienced? Why is war, for me, something I just read about or see on the PBS News Hour?
I might as well stop asking those questions, because there are no inarguable answers. I will never fully understand my good fortune—or the misfortune of others. I doubt that I will ever comprehend why there are people on this earth who never have enough to eat or a place to live, who never see anything beautiful, who never know a peaceful moment. Neither will I be able to grasp why my life has been virtually free of hardship and calamity. I look at the titles of the books on my shelf: When Bad Things Happen to Good People, The Problem of Pain, Suffering and the Search for Meaning, Making Sense Out of Suffering. Writers and thinkers have probed the mystery of misery since the dawn of time. Sheldon Vanauken, author of A Severe Mercy, a profound study of debilitating grief, names “the tears and groans of mankind” as “the hardest subject in the world.” Tackling the hardest subject in the world is beyond my capabilities. The best I can do is be grateful for every hot shower, cup of tea, and long walk through a peaceful neighborhood that are granted to me.
Want to Read More?
Check out Dr. Carolyn Lee’s blogs on her website, she features a new cliché each week or you can order her new book, Keep Your Eye on the Ball And Other Clichès to Live By. Want to know more about the woman behind the words? Read more about Carolyn here. We hope you enjoyed this article learning more about the cliché, why me?
