Perspective

Several of you commented on my statement that I was not on fire (part of my list of reasons life does not really suck.)

It's actually a thought taken from a phrase I picked up in high school. I had a friend (have, I'm sure, wherever he is) named Titus Freedom Grupp. Now, I wouldn't call him an optimist, but always when one of our crowd would be bitching and angsting onward about something or other, he'd stop us and point out, "It could be worse — you could be on fire!" That response to my own complaining has stuck with me ever since.

An online friend posted something the other day in which he complained about this and that and what a bad time he was having - and then said he came home and there were police cars and ambulances surrounding a house at the end of his block. Ambulances, he noted, always put things into perpective.

I'm truly glad to be reminded of the things I have to be grateful for when I feel miserable. On days like today, when I don't understand the paper I need to write and my baby dog has just left for her new home and I feel like I am boring and disastrous (I had always thought that one should be one or the other - to be both seems too unjust for words), I really am grateful that I am not on fire, and there are no ambulances in sight.