The Pity Party is Long Since Gone

 What happened in between?

I woke up this morning, slightly depressed as I usually am, and again decided I wasn't going there, and as every day, did my morning thing that brought me to peace. This morning, somehow I began to think of the incredible suffering of people everywhere that totally trumped what pathetic little stuff I was moaning about to many Western doctors.


Then I started to think of how few people on this planet had deluxe food, buckets of water right at hand, tempurpedic mattress, cell phone, A/C, computer, etc. What about that feeble old down-scuffling black man on Vine St.? Did he have a home? Probably not. Did he have money for food? Probably not.


Or the thickly sunburned white couple sitting on plastic cartons all day, holding their homeless help signs up to people in A/C cars, windows rolled up, looking straight ahead . . . if you don't look, you won't feel anything. THEY become near criminals because their house was foreclosed on, and neither one can get a job. Nobody stops all day. They're just closing up when a young man walks up to them and hands them a 20. The woman grabs hold of him in a full embrace and begins to cry. You're the first one to give us anything all day. We're from Alabama. O you're so sweet. And she hugs him again.


Their suffering is 10 times mine. And with this heat wave? So many old poor people downtown without even fans.


And the suffering inflicted by our own people on the planet is 50 times more than that of our homeless.


I did not start out to be morbid, yet . . . here we are. And so I have a heart of gratitude today for everything I have and everyone I know . . . from which there is no escape from being separated, eventually (says Thich Nhat Hanh). But that's another story . . .