Perspective

Just the other day my wife was talking on the phone with someone, and they began to tell her all of the things that their family was going through:
surgery for the dad, possible CA diagnosis for one of the kids, headaches for mom, trouble with basketball for the other kid.
when she got off the phone, she had a strange look about her. i asked why, and she said something along the lines of 'here we are, stressing out over what to do about the $ we got from the insurance company, and these people are worried about surgeries, CA, and other 'real' problems. just doesn't seem fair.'
today is typically fun foto friday. i was looking forward to getting on the web and finding some obscure photo to post, and if i could make it poke fun at one of my fellow bloggers at the same time? WIN/WIN.
Then i started seeing tweets about the jishin (earthquake) and tsunami (tidal wave) in Nihon (Japan). One of my first thoughts was, 'I need more coffee.' Another, more pertinent one, was 'i hope our basement doesn't flood.' Yet another involved thoughts of not posting a picture for fun foto friday. But THEN i started thinking about perspective.
Just because someone is having a bad day, does that preclude YOU from having a GOOD day? I don't think that it should. Sure, it isn't ok to flaunt your greatness good fortune in front of others, but i think that it should be ok to share some good news with those less fortunate. It might just turn on that light at the end of the tunnel for them!
It is often easy to fall into a mindset of over-commiserating: you just make yourself feel just as miserable as someone else. I see this as LOSE/LOSE.
SO. in keeping with that.....
One of the tweets today said that Japanese officials found 2-300 bodies washed up on shore. Can you imagine? I can't. But I CAN imagine several people washING up on shore....