The unanswerable question

It’s a question with no knowable answer, and yet I can’t help but ask it.

Why?

Why does a seemingly perfectly healthy man in his early 30s pass away suddenly, leaving behind his wife and young children?

Why would a loving and powerful God allow such a tragedy to occur?

Why him and not the sociopath who hurts people for the thrill of it and has no remorse?

Why?

I know there’s no answer, at least there’s not one that explains why with enough reasons for to satisfy my mind. But I ask anyway.

At times like this, there are plenty of cliché answers as people struggle to come to terms with the tragic and sudden loss of a colleague, a friend, a teammate, a son, a spouse. Phrases like “we just have to trust God” or “God has a plan, we just don’t know it.” I understand people who say that are dealing with grief in their own way and are trying to be helpful. I really do. But I find those answers unsatisfying at best and, at worst, indicative of a God who has the power to prevent or suffering and chooses not to.

So I don’t know. More importantly, I know that I don’t know.

And I know that I can’t know.

It’s an unanswerable question that people with far more intelligence, far more studying, and far more life experience than I have experienced have been unable to come up with an acceptable (to me) answer.

So what do I do?  What CAN I do?

The answer I keep coming back to is nothing.

And everything.

There’s nothing I can do, no amount of reading to be done, or questions to ask or insights to be gleaned that will help me find what I’m looking for. There is, ultimately, no satisfactory answer as to ‘why?’

But rather than take that as an excuse to do nothing, it’s a call to do everything. We may not know why people suffer and we may know it’s not fair, but that doesn’t mean you don’t do anything to alleviate that pain.

And it doesn’t have to be big things.

Smile at the cashier in the grocery store.

Visit a nursing home.

Ask someone older than you about their childhood.

Leave a note for the custodian at work to let you know you appreciate his or her work.

Send an email to someone thanking them for being a part of your life.

Take your kid out for ice cream.

Better yet, take your kid and the neighbor’s kids out for ice cream.

Do something for someone else. We all suffer in big ways and, more often, in ways we keep hidden from our friends, our loved ones and even (especially) ourselves. Getting outside of that suffering, even briefly, to help someone else is often all we can do. And while a visit to a nursing home may seem like nothing to you, it could be everything to someone who just needs someone to listen for 45 minutes.

Why do we suffer?

I don’t know. I’ll never know. But I am sure that you can’t go wrong being nice to someone.

The Greatest Compliment I've Ever Received

My son in downtown Wilmington, NC. October 2011

When I lived in North Carolina, I would regularly take my son for walks along the riverwalk in downtown Wilmington. It was near by, free, and he loved watching the boats go by. It was also a nice way to spend some time together and get out of the apartment, something that was desperately needed as an unemployed stay-at-home dad.

We'd drive to to parking deck and when he was really young, I'd get the stroller out and he'd go for a ride as we enjoyed walking around. As he got older and more steady on his feet, I started letting him walk with me. Now as you are likely aware, 2-year olds aren't exactly the most swift walkers. In fact, they're downright slow.

So after spending about an hour downtown, looking at the boats, walking up to the fountain outside the courthouse and generally seeing everything there is to see with a 2-year old out for a walk, we started making our way back to the parking deck.

We get to the entrance and as we're walking by the payment booth a kind older gentleman who has been watching us looks at me and says "you're walking slow with your little guy there. A lot of parents I see are trying to rush them along, but you're walking at his pace."

Smiling, I tell him, "Thank you, I try."

We walk on up to our car on the second deck and drive out. I stop to give him my ticket (we were back within the free 90-minute period) and he smiles and says "have a great day."

It's been two years since then and I still think back to the kind older man who took the time to make me feel like a good father.

Take Me Out To The Ballgame

"Daddy, what's a Royal?" my son asked me the other day.

The question wasn't completely out of the blue as it might initially seem. We had on the Kansas City Royals baseball game in the background while we were playing with cars. I told him that a Royal as someone who wasn't very good at baseball and you had to go Kansas City if didn't want to go to jail.

That's not true at all. I actually told him that a Royal was someone like a King or a Queen or a Prince. I then asked him if he knew were Kansas City was. Like most four-year olds, he guessed Kansas. I had the unenviable task of telling him that although his guess made perfect sense, Kansas City was actually in Missouri.

"WHAT?!?" he exclaimed.

"It's true I told him. Let's look on a map."

So we did and, sure enough, the Kansas City Royals play in Kansas City, Missouri.

"But Oklahoma City is in Oklahoma," he said confidently.

"Exactly," I told him.

While I'm still not sure sports is the great social teacher it often gets credit for (you know, teamwork, perseverance, all the stuff youth leagues preach in an attempt to justify their fees when a neighborhood baseball game with dads umpiring would work just as well), I do know it's a great teacher of math, geography and vocabulary, among others.

Like most young boys, my son was fascinated with race cars. He's got his little cars and loves to drive them, arrange them, build his blocks in such a way he can park them all inside. So naturally, I'd turn on the NASCAR race and let him watch for a bit. Obviously, he doesn't have the attention to watch the whole thing. Most people I know who say they "watch" NASCAR actually mean they turn on the race to take a nap to and wake up for the end. But what he does have is a fascination with numbers. So instead of just watching, I'd ask questions.

"What number car is winning?" or "Is 48 higher or lower than 24?" It was also great for understanding ordinal numbers (i.e. what place is Number 5 in?) As he got older, I've begun asking him to add or subtract some of the lower-numbered cars to work on those skills.

Whenever we watch a baseball game, I try to ask who's playing, what's the score, and more recently, where they are playing. He usually knows the first two (both city name and team name), bu

t doesn't always know where they are playing. He may know the name of the city, but not necessarily where it's  located. He knows Chicago is in Illinois (and that the Cubs usually lose), but Houston or Arlington or Milwaukee or Denver aren't always ones he knows. So it's a chance to pull out a map or his globe and find out where these cities are in relation to each other and in relation to where we live.

We did the same thing for the London Olympics, for the upcoming World Cup in Brazil and numerous other events.

We've also learned and looked up pictures several words, including the aforementioned Royals, Seahawks, Rangers, and Marlins among others. Fortunately, he hasn't asked me to explain what a Redskin is yet. I'm not looking forward to explaining why using a racial slur is acceptable. For now I just try to refer to them as Washington.

We probably watch more televised sports than we should with him being so young, but I justify it to myself by saying it's a teaching tool. And when he can tell me Los Angeles is in California outside of the context of a baseball game, I know the info is sinking in.

Phone a Friend

Despite a coffee mug to the contrary, I’m not the world’s best husband. I don’t know who is, but I can assure you it’s not me. I’ve had more than my fair share of screw ups and let my wife down more times than I care to remember.

But every now and again I strike gold with an idea that buys me more screw ups. Fortunately, I had just any idea recently for my wife’s [redacted] birthday.

Because it’s easy and convenient, most of my friends and I simply wish one another happy birthday on facebook. We’re already there, we see it’s someone’s birthday and in 10 seconds, we’ve fulfilled our friend duties by acknowledging the anniversary of the day of their birth in a socially acceptable manner. I’ve done it hundreds of times and will likely continue to do so. Every now and I again, I might actually send someone a text, you know, for that personal touch.

Well, the day before my wife’s birthday, I thought it’d be nice if she got a phone call. Or two. Or maybe 25 or 30 or more. So I set out to contact as many of her friends as I could asking them to take two or three minutes out of their day to call her. Anyone from old college friends we hadn’t seen in a decade to neighbors who moved away to former student-workers of hers.

At about 9 a.m., my wife messages me to say something’s going on. “All these people are calling me,” she said. I did my best to play dumb, asking “who’s calling?” and letting her enjoy her calls. By noon, she says she’s on to me. When she gets home from work, she tells me she’s been overwhelmed. She’d be on the phone with one person and she’d see someone else call and go “Ohh, I wanted to talk to them too but I didn’t want to stop talking to the person on the phone.”

I get the feeling it’s a birthday she won’t soon forget.

Helping

A high school classmate of mine died today.

We weren't close or anything. We had a few classes together and as far as I can remember, he was always friendly towards me and I hope I was the same way towards him. But we never hung out outside of school. We were just in different circles and, as I imagine is common in all high schools, there was very little overlap between our circles outside of school.

I don't feel that I'm old enough to have high school classmates passing away. But I guess that's the point. None of us will ever feel old enough to believe a classmate should die.

This isn't a "live every minute like it's your last" post. Instead, it's a "take time to do something for someone else"  post. We're all stuck on this little blue ball we call earth for a short time. We don't know how long, but we know it's not much. So use that time to make things better for someone else.

Visit a friend you haven't seen in a while.

Call someone you've been meaning to call.

Smile and say hello the custodians at your office.

Donate to a charity.

Write a letter to a friend who moved away.

Visit a nursing home.

We don't know when we're leaving, but we can sure make things better for others while we're here.