Monday, August 25, 2014

If You Think You Are Having a Bad Day...

You probably aren't, but you are probably having a momentary pity party and that's human.

Seems to me that a measure of a happy person, a content person is how fast you can move from the pity party to feeling content again and grateful for this life we have. A few moments? A few days? A few years? A few decades?  A lifetime? Never?

If it's not life and death, then it's probably a pity party of some degree.

Some context:

Yesterday I was at an event and the people at this event are all families with a loved one with serious and/or chronic illness, many life-threatening conditions. I saw a family there that I knew from an entirely different context, but knew that if they were there-they had a reason, and it for sure as heck would not be a good one.

So I gave the mom a kind of 'what are you doing here' look.

And she said, quite simply "oh-didn't you know about my brain tumour"?

Needless to say, it was quite humbling and I am so glad that she was there, under the shining sky to tell the tale, thank G-d.

I spent all of last Friday trying to avoid the pictures of the little 4 year old boy who was murdered by a Hamas rocket in Israel but his beautiful picture was everywhere.

Yesterday, while I was feeding my son I just started crying, thinking about him and his family. My heart was breaking, even though it's not my sad thing directly-the Jewish people are all one family, one nation. As a mother, it's the unthinkable.

So like I say, if it's not life and death, you have to reclassify it in your head.

That sentence "oh-didn't you know about my brain tumour" will stay with me forever. Not that it was life-changing for me because I am a life-lover, but it was certainly an important one.