Toronto woke up different today.
Sunlight pouring through the windows. Crisp air. Blue skies stretched wide like the city exhaled overnight. Yesterday was gray and reflective… today feels awake.
I’m heading home to Texas this evening with Craig, but there’s something about this morning that feels like it needed to land before I leave.
Yesterday we sat with family. Shared a slow lunch. Stories, laughter, pauses in between. The kind of moments you don’t rush because you can feel something deeper moving underneath them.
Craig spent time with his father and was given pieces of family history. Not just things… pieces.
Pocket watches over a hundred years old.
A 150-year-old Bible.
Photographs from lives long lived before ours.
You could feel it.
Not just nostalgia. Not just sentiment.
But something quieter.
Acceptance.
The kind that only comes from living long enough to understand that this life… it gives and it takes, and it never asks permission before it does either.
And somehow, all of it belongs.
A few days before coming here, I was on the phone with someone I’ve known for over a decade. One of those rare people where the conversation always goes somewhere real. No surface talk. No fluff.
He shared with me that a dear friend of his had passed.
And then, in the same breath, he shared something that stayed with me long after we hung up.
He said he found himself asking a question…
But not the one most people ask.
Not “why does this always happen?”
Not “why is life so hard?”
He said…
“Why me? Why do I get to have a life this blessed?”
And I sat with that.
Because that’s not the question most people live in.
Most people, when they look at their life, at the pain, the loss, the setbacks, the moments that cut deeper than expected —
They ask:
Why me?
But it’s not curiosity.
It’s weight.
It’s that Eeyore energy… that quiet, heavy, down-trodden narrative that life is somehow happening to them, not through them.
And from that place, everything starts to filter through a lens of lack.
Every hardship becomes proof.
Every struggle becomes confirmation.
Every pain becomes identity.
And before long, life starts to feel like something stacked against you.
As if God or the Universe, picked you out of a crowd and said, you… you get the hard version.
But that’s not truth.
That’s focus.
Because here’s what we don’t talk about enough —
Suffering is not selective.
It doesn’t skip certain homes or certain families or certain zip codes.
It’s part of being human.
We are feeling, emotional, relational beings.
We love deeply. We attach. We hope. We build.
And because of that…
We lose.
We grieve.
We break.
We question.
That’s not punishment, it’s participation.
There’s a teaching that lives deep in shamanic traditions, something Shaman Derek speaks to in Spirit Hacking:
That what we often call suffering… is actually medicine.
Not soft medicine. Not gentle medicine.
But the kind that works on parts of you nothing else can reach.
The kind that strips illusion.
Breaks open identity.
Forces you to meet yourself without distraction.
And most people reject it.
Because it doesn’t feel like healing when you’re inside of it.
It feels like hell.
I’ve had seasons of that.
Moments that lasted far longer than moments should.
Years, even.
Where I was so locked into the pain, the fear, the instability… that I couldn’t see anything else.
I was asking “why me?”
But not from a place of curiosity.
From a place of collapse.
From a place that felt like it had been swallowed whole by something darker.
You could call it victimhood.
And if I’m honest… it’s not a gentle thing.
It’s consuming.
It narrows your vision until all you can see is what’s wrong.
What’s missing.
What’s broken.
What’s unfair.
And it blinds you to everything else.
Even the good.
Especially the good.
But what I’ve realized this past week…
Is that I wasn’t asking the same question when life was working.
When things were flowing.
When blessings were showing up.
When doors were opening.
I wasn’t sitting there going —
Why me? Why do I get this? Why does this keep happening for me?
And that’s the shift.
Because after that conversation, I found myself thinking…
Why not him?
Why not me?
Why not any of us?
And the answer that kept coming back wasn’t complicated.
It was simple.
Almost annoyingly simple.
What you focus on… grows.
There’s a proverb that says:
“A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” — Proverbs 17:22
Read that slowly.
Because it’s not saying life won’t bring pain.
It’s saying what you hold in your heart while you walk through it… matters.
Deeply.
Einstein said it in his own way:
“Where attention goes, energy flows.”
Different language.
Same truth.
And spiritual teachers have echoed this for centuries.
Wayne Dyer put it like this:
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
Not because the world suddenly rearranges itself…
But because you do.
Your perception.
Your interpretation.
Your meaning-making.
I’ve had a practice for over a decade now.
Before my feet hit the ground in the morning… before coffee, before stretching, before anything —
I name five blessings.
Every day.
No matter what season I’m in.
Some days it’s easy.
Some days it feels like reaching through fog to find them.
Especially when that “dark angel” shows up — the one that tries to pull my focus back into what’s wrong, what’s lacking, what’s uncertain.
But I do it anyway.
Because it trains something.
It conditions something.
It reminds me —
There is always more here than what hurts.
But this week… I added something new.
I started asking…
Why me?
Not from pain.
From awe.
Why do I get to experience this kind of love?
Why do these opportunities keep finding me?
Why does life keep meeting me here?
And every time…
The same freakin’ answer.
Why not me?
The answer doesn’t change based on your state.
Victim or victor.
Same question. Same answer.
The difference is the lens.
Because when you start to see even the hard things as medicine…
Something shifts.
Not instantly.
Not magically.
But steadily.
The pain doesn’t disappear.
But it changes shape.
It becomes information.
Growth.
Refinement.
And the “bad” stops being purely bad.
It becomes useful.
And when you stay anchored in what is working… what is beautiful… what is still good even in the middle of everything —
Life responds to that, because you’re choosing where to place your attention.
And that choice…
It builds your world.
Toronto is bright this morning.
The same city that felt quiet and gray yesterday now feels alive.
Nothing changed.
And everything did.
So maybe the question isn’t:
Why is this happening to me?
Maybe it’s:
What am I choosing to see?
What am I allowing to define this moment?
What grows from here based on where I place my attention?
Because life will hand you both.
The struggle.
And the blessing.
Again and again.
And the truth is…
You don’t control which one arrives.
But you do shape which one expands.
So, if you’re going to ask the question…
Ask it fully.
Ask it honestly.
Ask it on both sides of the spectrum.
Why me?
And then…
Why not me?
And watch what starts to change when you do.
→ What’s something in your life right now you could shift from “why me?” to “why not me?”
Share it below… and if this hit you, send it to someone who needs the reminder.
As always loving and praying for your truth,
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Rene’ Schooler(Author)
