I know a woman who gets parked in front of a television every day to watch CBC Newsworld.  If she lived in a nursing home she would be in a lounge, usually with others, watching daytime TV:  talk shows, game shows, nothing consequential but generally upbeat.  “Babysitting TV” for people in wheelchairs to fall asleep to or that won’t agitate them.  Me, I’d be really agitated to be left in front of a large screen television to hear people who knew nothing about me offer tips on how to live my life.  But she doesn’t.  Her caregivers know she has a good mind and limited mobility so they set her in front of a screen on which she can literally watch the world whoosh by.

She can’t use the controller, and is only articulate about what she sees and hears if you ask.  Her hearing and vision are fine, it’s the rest of her body that won’t let her continue to explore her world.  She teaches me.  I’ve been schooled by reflective people from Job, who was not patient, by the way, who had enough courage to keep asking “Why?”, to this woman in her 90’s.  Like Job who sat in the dust and watched his life fall to pieces before his eyes, this woman can’t always escape the news that is broadcast seemingly directly to her. 

 She doesn’t ask “Why?” as far as I know.  She seems to know there isn’t much of an answer.  No one who might offer one feels at all accountable to her.  She grasps history and economics and could offer insightful commentary on the causes of much of what she watches.  Although I can’t say for sure I believe she may even have stopped asking God for an explanation.  She seems content to know, as Ecclesiastes wrote, “There is nothing new under the sun.”  Of course I am guessing in part;  it’s just that she is one of the few people I know who doesn’t always need to know why. 

I doubt she would put it in these terms, but I don’t think she believes that God or the universe owes her a reason, she doesn’t need to hold either of them accountable.  She continues to believe that she is accountable for her actions and attitudes.  She makes me think we’d all hurt a lot less if we were more consistent in being accountable to others than demanding they be accountable to us.