Life

Friday 24/10/08
9.30 pm

I haven't written in a while here. Previously my blog has been filled with light anecdotes about the importance of food in my life. Tonight's entry is about something different, something deeper.

It's a funny thing about life sometimes. Here we are, complaining that we missed the train/tram and ending up being late for work, complaining about how our wages are really crappy, how stingy our boss is, etc. As if we're the most pitiful beings in this whole planet. How it's all about poor me, me and ME.

I found out one of my colleagues has breast cancer. A very remarkably strong woman, whose husband left her for another woman 10 years ago whilst she was 8 months pregnant with the second child.How she lost the house after the divorce, and climbed out of that tumultuous time in her life driven to her work..and her two kids. No mucking around, no casual lovers for her. Working 7 days a week, finally saving up to buy a new house for the kids. And now, at the age of 38, the shattering diagnosis.

I felt my eyes tearing up as I listened to this woman narrating her story. Here am I, feeling like I was the most unlucky being on the face of this planet with my job, my situation..and here's this lady going through every single day with a death sentence hanging over her head. With two young kids (and no father to look after them) at the ages of 8 and 10.

These powerful verses of the Bible come to my mind: "The length of our days is seventy years, or eighty, if we have the strength, yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away" (Psalm 90:10)

I've come to realise that sometimes, how we make of our life comes down to us alone. We can view our lives as the most miserable existence on earth, or we can give thanks when we receive that pay slip with the "crappy" rates because it means we are still fit enough to work.