I recently wrote about a bad day I was having. It seemed pretty horrible at the time. And it wasn’t good. But . . . there are some really terrible, horrible things that happen in this world. I won’t do the litany; you know them. Suffice it to say none of those kinds of things happened to me on my bad day.

That awareness isn’t about making myself feel good that I’ve skirted woes when others haven’t been so lucky. To me, that feels a little like that old saying, “I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.” This kind of sentiment has always struck me as a little perverse—the notion that seeing someone else’s misfortune should somehow make me feel better. As if the Power of All has randomly chosen me for good fortune and just as randomly chosen another for very bad fortune. As if I should feel grateful for such  capriciousness.

I prefer looking at such incidents in another way, as a reminder of what’s genuinely important in this life. To recognize, to understand, to appreciate what really matters. The little things as well as the great big ones. To not be so self-absorbed. Seems to me it’s the best chance we have to make the world a better place—certainly the best chance for contentment and true joy.

Just wanted to get that out there.