Magical thinking: Does the world revolve around you?

I find it interesting that when something bad, I mean very bad, happens to us. Events like sudden death of loved ones, hearing of fatal medical diagnostics, or job termination without good reasons. There are two common reactions that tend to pop up in our mind around these events.

• We think that there must be some clues to let us know that this event is coming.
  
• People who experience these catastrophic events in their lives tend to say these words in their mind "Doesn't the rest of the world notice what just happened to me!!!"

Interestingly, two books provide evidence to support these reactions. One is Joan Didion's book, The Year of Magical Thinking. The other is Mitch Albom's book, Tuesdays with Morrie.

Here is Joan Didion's reflection on the moment of her husband, John Dunne's sudden death from cardiac arrest:

"It was in fact the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened, absorbing it, incorporating it, getting past it."

Here is Morrie Schwartz's reaction as told by Mitch Albom when he learned that he had ALS :

"Outside, the sun was shining and people were going about their business. A woman ran to put money in the parking meter. Another carried groceries. .... My old professor, meanwhile, was stunned by the normalcy of the day around him. Shouldn't the world stop? Don't they know what has happened to me?"