I am NOT unique
I am not unique. You are not unique. We are not the only ones to experience stress, difficulty, frustration and painful experiences.
What happens to me or you happens to ALL of us. There is no conspiracy against only me or you. We are not the laboratory rats of the universe.
We all experience hurt, disappointment, heartache, loss, failure, sadness, misfortune, setback, defeat, distress, despondency, despair or whatever else is causing us stress.
Whatever we feel so uniquely victimized by, millions of other people have also experienced it, and likely much worse.
My age may be showing, but I do remember poor old “btfsplk” of the Li ‘l Abner comics. (precursor to the “Beverly Hillbillies”) ??
Knowing that bad stuff happens to everyone, not just the “btsfplk’s” of the world, there’s really no one right answer as to Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. (Quite a catchy book title and a question about which more than one book has been written!)
As we know, but hate being reminded:
- life is terminal,
- life is what happens while we are busy making other plans,
- the sun shines on both the righteous and the unrighteous, and
- we each experience the results of the choices we’ve made.
Something I remember learning from the philosopher Jim Rohn:
It is not what happens to you that makes the difference of how your life works out; what happens to you happens to all of us, it’s how you respond to what happens to you that determines the major outcome of your life.”
And we do really know this truth, but sometimes we just feel like complaining!
And we do really know that our experience is indeed the result of our perception and naming of it.
And, we do really know that, like everyone else, we are surrounded by beauty, abundance, opportunities, creativity, friendships that we can choose to focus on.
It’s our unique choices within our experiences that make our lives, our days, our challenges. And our unique choices provide us with our claim to unique; they determine how much joy and happiness we will experience.
So… I am unique and you are unique,
just like everyone else!
