I have a tendency to say, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ even when something bad happens to someone who is close to me, and who is clearly directly suffering from whatever it is. It has made me wonder if I am selfish. I don't want to suffer and anything that causes me to suffer even in a second-hand way seems like a direct attack on 'me'. It has made me wonder, if instead of being concerned about the one who is genuinely suffering, I am concerned about myself and about my own suffering that comes from seeing them suffer, if you know what I mean. I can't bear to see them suffer so what I am really bothered about is my own pain? 

But, when I think about this a bit more philosophically...hear me out, I am moving into abstract territory:  No one else and nothing else feels as real to oneself as oneself, wouldn't you agree? It could almost be as if the whole world is a simulation, everyone I see and hear around me is a mirage, the only thing I can absolutely be sure of is this voice in my head, my own consciousness, and the travails of my body, because I simply cannot tune them out. My mind and my body are the only things I cannot pretend to not exist because I experience their presence every waking and even sleeping moment. To experience itself means to sense them? I cannot rise above or below them. Other people or other things, they might as well exist or not—but they do exist through my mind/body or perception through these in a way. Everything that happens affects me only through my own reference point in a way—my mind/body is the conduit. If I/these did not exist, nothing else would really. 

Coming back to my original musing, I suppose what I am trying to say but not capturing it in the best way is, others' suffering becomes real to me because it is channelled into my mind/body. And when I ask God why this is happening to me, it is not really an empty or a selfish claim in that sense… it is directed at me as the thing that’s most real to me. Or maybe I am just selfish and philosophizing it away? ;)