Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Keep Things in Perspective



A simple truth: life is all about perspective. The easy thing to do in life is to focus only on ourselves and our individual issues. If we broaden our scope, however, we realize that there are oftentimes much more serious issues that exist in the world. It’s not a bad thing to focus on ourselves and improving our respective situations, but we have to also realize that someone else has it worse. Sounds straightforward enough, but life has a way of making sure we truly have our perspectives straight.

Just this past Sunday I found myself complaining about having to go to work on Monday, how the weekend’s too short, and a bunch of other nonsense. Later that night, I found out that a high school classmate of mine lost her long battle with cancer. The next day, I found out that my cousin had a successful kidney transplant and the results are positive to this point, but he’s still suffering a lot of pain. And I’m sitting here complaining about having to go to work?

As cliché as it may be, that doesn’t make it any less true: our job on this earth is to live life to the fullest. We should be doing this for ourselves anyway, but at the very least we should do it for those who haven’t been afforded the same opportunities to do so. Nothing is guaranteed to us, so we shouldn’t squander the time that we have. Again, life is about perspective; go back to the old adage that if we all put our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.

So let’s appreciate and enjoy the time we’ve been given, help others, and maybe throw a smile or two in the mix along the way. That sounds like a good life to me.

JIP