Sometimes life is funny, life is frustrating, life is sad, or life just doesn't make sense. It's those days that we usually look at ourselves and wonder if there's really even any point in spending time doing the trivial and perhaps miniscule things that previously we thought were so important and time consuming that it took up our entire thought process and energy efforts.
The things we thought were important, and, for the most part, mattered. The things that, when we step back and look at it now, really didn't matter all that much at all.
This week we're reminded of the things that matter. When tragedy strikes, and hits close to home, everything is suddenly put through a set of high powered binoculars, and we begin to analyze our own lives and compare it to those who were affected most. We wonder, we think, and we worry, that if something like that happened to me, how would I get through it, and how would I cope? How can they cope? How can anyone cope?
It's a question that's plagued people for as long as people have been facing tragedy: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Why is it that those people on that highway had to be in that place, at that time, and endure that fate? Why did it have to happen to them? Why did it have to happen to anyone?
Why didn't some giant arm come down and move them out of the way just at the right time? Why didn't something protect them, and keep them safe? Why did it have to happen like it did?
I've learned in life that you should never ask why, unless you have a good answer for “why not?” Why not them? Why not you? Why not me? Admittedly, I have no answer to any of those – why or why not – because I can't think of anything that would make me special enough in all of the universe to be immune from tragedy or hurt, or sorrow. Neither can you.
We're just people – common folk, just like everyone else. Measured up against the the seven billion people here with us, nothing really stands us out to be exempt from anything. But for many of us, when you look at life outside of this world, then you're talking about a whole new ball game.
Out of this world – you can be somebody. You can stand out, and you can live above the rest of us down here in a place not made of brick, or wood, or metal. That doesn't run on gasoline, and that doesn't have the trivial and miniscule things we often worry about down here. That isn't temporary, and where tragedy can never strike again.
To me, that's what matters.
— Rudy Norman
