You think you have problems?

Perspective is a wonderful thing: it allows you to step back, look around you and fix yourself and your current situation in reality. Usually, it gives you the chance to moderate some extreme reactions/emotions to your current situation. Sometimes, it gives you a strong slap, stingingly reminding you that what passes for complaints in your world could very well be considered blessings in someone else's world. Sometimes, it just makes you want to give up altogether when you see someone dealing with the hand he/she has been dealt so remarkably better than you are dealing with yours. Perspective can cause you to crawl right back into your comfortable shell called denial and take a nap because thinking about all of this has exhausted you.

I have, in point of fact, reacted in each of these ways to my current situation in the past few weeks. I would like to say that I take the piano teacher's model and apply it ... move forward, don't look back nostalgically, just deal. Rather, I wallow in self-pity and, frankly, entirely unrealistic longings far more than I care to admit. But, there it is.

One day, you are taking a walk, and someone tries to take your life... and ten years later you think of it as a blessing because it helped you redefine your priorities and appreciate every thing in your life a little more, though, like any other human being, there are times when you stumble.

WOW is all I could think as I read through this article. She's amazing, and maybe that's why she survived, and maybe that's why she's recovered so miraculously. Maybe she's extraordinary. On the other hand, maybe she is terribly ordinary and just made it happen. I am going to stick to believing she is an ordinary person who managed to be led by perspective rather than pity. I wish her continued health and wisdom with her new life.