Still Standing After All That Has Happened... Amazing!

More and more, I have begun to take it for granted that, at the end of the day, things will have worked out for me yet one more time. To take anything for granted like that is a dangerous thing to do. If anything, I should be continually amazed that I am still among the people in this world who is still standing upright, in the face of all the adversity I will encounter in life.

More often than not, life presents us with unexpected surprises and daunting challenges. For any of us, it is no mean feat just to get through each day. And yet most of us do just that. How do we do that, without falling apart in the process? Where do we find the strength to move past the next obstacle obstructing our way... and then the one that presents itself after that? Why is it that so often we are blessed because someone is looking out for us? That is not the case for everyone in this world. Why are we allowed to be accounted among the people who are fortunate in this regard?

I don't have answers to any of these questions. I am beginning to believe that to a certain extent it is just the luck of te draw. Some people are lucky. Some are not. I only know that each of us should be utterly amazed that we are alive and hopefully well at the end of this particular day.

This is a pretty dangerous world. One suspects it has always been a dangerous world. Only in the past, we weren't being bombarded from every side by the media, reminding just how dangerous a place it is. And yet somehow most of the time, we are able to avoid the many sorts of catastrophes that could befall us. Something of the "There but for the grace of G'd, go I..." thing.

Sometimes we are unable to dodge the bullet and shit happens to even us. On Jan 3rds of this year, I fell asleep at the wheel and totaled my car. That's the bad news. Shaken though I was, I walked away from the crash with only a few bruises. That's the good news. And hey, most of us in the world do not have to live in Baghdad or any of the other cities in Iraq. That's good news too. So no matter how crappy we think our life may be, most of the billions of people in the world just have to keep things in perspectives.

There is a prayer that goes something like this: Thank you, G'd, for allowing me to get to this day. I would add to this line: ... in one piece. I advocate that every one of us needs to always be just a bit amazed that our life is so blessed... that our lives are filled with people who love us and whom we love... that we are actually able to realize so many of our ambitions and goals... that we are allowed to be healthy and to find a measure of happiness in life... that for the most part, our lives are as good as they are.

I am not saying that any of us should become foolishly overly idealistic. I am only saying that we should never become too jaded about our good fortune in life. That good fortune is a gift, something to be treasured and richly appreciated. What we must always remind ourselves is to feel amazement that our lives are so rich and good and that for some reason, we are one of the lucky ones, still standing upright at the end of the day.