Waking Up

I use the “Morning Coffee” add-on for Mozilla Firefox and multiple websites open into separate tabs when I click on the coffee cup icon each day. I have some websites that are included everyday or some that I include only on my days off when I have more time. BlogHer is one my everyday websites that I give a quick perusal to before heading off to work. Today one of the bloggers highlighted Iraqi women bloggers. I clicked on a link to a teenage girl’s blog and reading the ordeal she has been going through reminded me of all the things I take for granted… clean water, safety, family, friends:

“Here and in this blog nothing is normal. Here people are wearing a thick clothes under thick clothes till they become like a ball. Here people are drinking a dirty water,and take a bath once every week because the water is somehow closer to black colour than white. and if you are going to take a bath, you might possibly became dirty more than you are already.”

It is so easy to forget what you have and to focus on the things that are going wrong in your life… the stressful things that loom large on your horizon. But in just a moment, when you look at your life through the eyes of someone whose reality has been turned upside down and has become focused on survival, you suddenly remember all the ways that you are so lucky, so privileged. Then you realize how much your happiness can be about how you choose to see your life. The water I drink today will be the most delicious water I have ever had. May it seem so tomorrow too.