Have you ever ask yourself this question?
Well, your not alone, not a day goes by that I have not asked myself, why me. Why am I am I getting old? Why am I not able to do the things I once did? Why do I have to be the only family member going bald These are of course common among those of us a certain age.
My "why me" moments take a little more serious tone however, for I ask why me, every time I hear of a tragedy, someone had succumb to illness, why yet another young person has suddenly had their yesterdays swallowed up in an instant. Never to fulfill the dreams of their youth. Yet here I am, healthy, safe, fed, warm while others are ailing, unsafe, unfed, cold and unloved. If that were not enough to beg the question, but what if your life was saved by such a tragedy, if you were pulled from the brink of death at the final curtain call, what if, someone else's tragedy became your miracle..
It is exactly that situation I found myself in, during the early summer of 2018. I had not taken care of myself, when I was young I partied too much, lived too fast and it caught up with me. I was dying from liver failure and the only hope would be a liver transplant.
My wife my children and grandchildren were preparing for the worst. It would take a while to get added to the list, then pray a match would be found. On July 23rd 2018 I received that transplant, and that's when this question began to pry even more. Depression, anxiety, all surrounded this question which would ache like tooth pain, like a thousand tiny razor nicks on my heart. I could not help but shake the feeling that I had somehow cheated death, and therefore must have cheated someone out of life. Not rational I know, but this sometimes is how the mind of an individual who has been transplanted works, or at least how mine worked.
Notice that last word, worked, it does not work that way anymore. For the question not longer is why me? But instead, why not me?
When you have been given the gift of life, for a second, and third time, your mind starts to slowly turn to the realization that with such an extraordinary gift, comes an extraordinary debt. No, not monetarily (well that's not exactly true) but an unfathomable depth of gratitude, and in that gratitude comes a call to action, to lift others as you have yourself been lifted. Gratitude is a verb, a call to action by the heart.
I realize that I was saved for a cause, perhaps I am being too presumptuous, perhaps my cause is nothing more, than to help others when I can, where I can, and when I can, even if its inconvenient. Maybe I listen a little longer to a friend or a stranger who is compelled to share their burden. Maybe its collecting canned goods, for the local pantry. Maybe its saying hello to someone who feels invisible, it matters not so much the act of kindness, but the action of love coming out of you to another is cathartic.
So the next time you find those old thoughts of self pity, ask yourself, Why Not Me!
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