Lessons Learned from...Getting a prescription filled

This week I got a prescription filled and paid $9.77.
Coming home from vacation, I had my tweezers confiscated at airport security.

How are these two events related? I had previously gotten the exact same prescription filled, at the exact same pharmacy, with the exact same insurance coverage, for a total cost of $0. I had previously taken the very same tweezers through various aviation security checkpoints with nary an issue. So why am I now tweezer-less and $9.77 poorer?

I haven’t a clue, which drives me crazy. It’s not that I mind being charged ten bucks or having my tweezers denied airplane access. I mind not understanding why my life seems to be at the mercy of random acts of corporate big-brotherhood. I want to understand what happens to me. I want the world to be rational, consistent, reasonable and fair. I don’t want to feel ripped-off.

Forget physical needs (food, water, shelter), the most universal of human desires might be this: to know that that our sense-making abilities are being put to good use. In the end, I think we can accept the bad things that happen to us if we understand why they happen. We ultimately just want to “get it”.