Rhetorical Questions

Just because you know something might happen doesn't mean you loose the option to be disappointed should it end up happening.

For example: it might rain today-or any day-, but you chi'ed you're hair this morning and were looking forward to dinner plans. When it does rain and you get caught in it, your hair gets messed up, you're gonna new sad. If someone flippantly told you, "well, the weatherman said there was a 10% chance of rain this week" make you feel better, or (after you thought about it for a minute) make you want to punch them in the mouth?

Similarly, if your scoop of ice cream fell off your cone and onto the ground. Does a cool, "yeah, it happens" help.

Or if your flight was cancelled, does "hmmm... Maybe if you checked in a little earlier, it wouldn't have happened that way..." make you feel any better, or possibly just enrage you a bit? There is no connection between the two things! It is still upsetting that your flight was cancelled, your plans have now been forced to change, and you are disappointed.

I understand that human nature makes us instinctively want to answer the question "why" when something bad happens. But what makes us lose sight of how to me (even coordially) sympathetic?

I'm typing in this tiny little screen here, and not sure if this post makes my point; so I'll try one last analogy. This one a bit darker...

I believe the saying goes: "only two things in life are certain: death and taxes". So we know it could (will) happen eventually to all of us, surely no one would find it acceptable (let alone appropriate or compassionate) to say to a distraught young widower, "well, it happens sometime. Do you think it was something you did?"

Sun April 4