Why Not Me?

Eleven years ago this month I had a good friend, Diana, die from cancer. She was 31 years old and left behind a husband, two little boys and a 7-month old baby girl. I don’t know why she came to my mind today. Maybe it was because I found myself for an instant, wondering, “why me?” I don’t like when people say that and I especially don’t let my self dwell on that question for more than an instant. I think that is because of Diana. When she first told me she had cancer she said she came across a lot of people who were asking, “Why me?” She told me, “Of all the people who get sick and get cancer, why not me?” Everyone has something hard to bear at different times in their lives. The next time something wonderful happens to me and goes especially well, it is then that I want to ask, “Why me!”

“Life lives, life dies. Life laughs, life cries. Life gives up and life tries. But life looks different through everyone's eyes.” – unknown.

Hope Transforms

Just when the caterpiller thought the wold was over, it became a butterfly ~ Unknown

There are moments in life that it appears things aren’t going the way we had planned. If we look at history there are numerous examples of individuals that transformed from failure into success.


Henry Ford In 1899 the young mechanic and engineer started the Detroit Automobile Company with the backing of three prominent politicians. Ford hadn't quite mastered the innovation and production techniques that would eventually make him rich, though. Over the next two years, Ford proved to be too much of a perfectionist, and his plant only produced 20 cars as he painstakingly tinkered with designs.

The enterprise went bankrupt in 1901 and reorganized into the Henry Ford Company later that year. Ford eventually left that group and finally got things right in 1903, when he founded the Ford Motor Company.

Walt Disney His name may be a stalwart brand today, but early in his career, Disney was just a struggling filmmaker with too many bills. In 1922 he started his first film company with a partner in Kansas City, Kansas.

The two men bought a used camera and made short advertising films and cartoons under the studio name Laugh-O-Gram. Disney even signed a deal with a New York company to distribute the films he was producing. That arrangement didn't work out so well, though, as the distributor cheated Disney's studio.

Without the distributor's cash, Disney couldn't cover his overhead, and his studio went bankrupt in 1923. He then left Kansas City for Hollywood, and after a series of increasingly successful creations, Disney debuted a new character named Mickey Mouse in 1928.

Sometimes we have to be willing to keep trying to risk everything to discover success. As the butterfly leaves behind what is was in order to become a butterfly. We must sometimes let go of what we have to get what we want. Hope transforms.

Optimism & Hope

Hope and optimism go hand-in-hand. The dictionary.com definition of the word optimism is as follows.


op•ti•mism op-tuh-miz-uh m

–noun

1. a disposition or tendency to look on the more favorable side of events or conditions and to expect the most favorable outcome.

2. the belief that good ultimately predominates over evil in the world.

3. the belief that goodness pervades reality.

An optimistic approach to all problems can keep us in a state of hope. If we can search for and find goodness in all situations we can find hope.

There is a fable about a set of identical twins. One finds hope in all things, the other is the opposite, a true pessimist. The worried parents took the twins to a psychologist and followed his instructions. On their next birthday they put the twins in separate room to open their presents. The optimist was given a box for manure. The pessimist was given the best toys and gifts – a computer, toy car, etc. When the pessimist opened his gifts he was sure the computer would just break and the car wasn’t as good as the one his friend had. They looked in on the optimistic child and found he was thrilled with his huge box of manure. When asked why he was so happy with that gift, he replied, “Where there is this much manure there must be a pony!” Hope is being able to find the source of every good gift.