When was the last time you asked Hashem this question when things were going well for you? Better yet, when was the first time?
But when our expectations take a left at the fork of Life’s road rather then the anticipated right, Why Me is the de rigueur kasha on what we perceive to be somewhat of an unjust breakdown in the order of things.
Virtually all of us suffer to one degree or another from Life Expectation Syndrome, which can be loosely defined as, something that usually happens is expected to continue happening with no questions asked.
The fact is that most babies are born without incident so we expect no less. For every car stuck on the Long Island Expressway with a flat or worse hundreds of cars are passing by unscathed (ever so slowly) toward their destinations. And so on for every facet of our lives including ruchniyas.
And so we consider it quite natural to seek a normative existence, and in doing so we bottom out on a humongous speed bump called reality because in Hashem’s world, which just happens to be the only game in town, nothing that takes place should be considered as normal.
Rav Dessler tells us in Michtav Me-Eliyahu that the difference between nes and teva is the frequency of occurrence. The caterpillar that morphs itself into a butterfly is nothing less than Techias Ha Meisim, and yet, our collective jaw doesn’t drop upon beholding this phenomenon because due to its predictability and frequency we consider it to be a phenomenon of Nature.
But Rav Dessler’s differentiation between nes and teva was only meant as a labeling mechanism for these two phenomena, for in reality the two are actually one because everything is a miracle.
You woke up today? Is this not a miracle of miracles? You were for all practical purposes dead because a person can’t live without a neshama and you didn’t get yours back until you woke up.
So did you say why me?
And even the Modeh Ani that you did say, when you said the words, were you makker tov to Hashem for yet another opportunity to make something of yourself or were you too preoccupied with yawning?
Life Expectation Syndrome has no application in a world where everything is a miracle because miracles follow no order of things within the realm of our understanding. That they seem to is only to cover up the fact that they are, in fact, miracles.
If we truly understood that everything that happens to us is a nes, and I mean everything, then our entire worldview would flip one hundred and eighty degrees, and we would be amazed when things went well, and not the other way round. It may be one thing to expect to ride a Life merry-go-round that has been in motion forever, but it’s something else altogether to expect a nes to be done for one’s self as if it were an entitlement.
And if we’re not so brazen as to take nissim for granted as we presently do Nature, then when things occasionally go south in our lives we won’t say why me because having no expectations, we will have no kashes.
And having no expectations, there can be only one response when one of life’s miracles puts a smile on our face:
Why me?
