Do you remember this scene? You are gathered with your classmates on the school playground for the afternoon kickball game. The two best kickball players are chosen to be the captains of the respective teams and now comes the time for choosing the rest of the players for each team. The air fills with the sounds of “Pick me! Pick me!” as hands wave frantically in the direction of the team captains. As every playground athlete knows, this exercise in being noticed has nothing to do with a desire to play on a specific team, but has everything to do with not being the last chosen. As the available selection of players dwindles, the shouts of “Pick me” give way to sighs too deep for words as pleading eyes bore into the soul of the chooser. The fear and humiliation of being the last chosen are palpable. Invariably, when there are only two remaining players to be selected something akin to the following can be heard: “I’ll take X and you can have Y” or “Okay, Y, I guess we’ll take you.” (Like they had a choice since Y was the last one left standing). Can you sense the pain that accompanies those italicized words?

            Each of us wishes to be a chosen one -- not one taken by default, not one unwillingly forced on another, but one chosen for our own merit or because the other somehow delights in our presence. Yet, life has its share of unchosenness -- the class office for which we failed to win enough votes; the one we loved, who, for reasons yet unfathomable, could not return that love to us; the career-maker of a job that went to someone els

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