Always Someone Worse Off

An auspicious title, no? What could that mean? What inspired so much negativity? 

I remember talking to someone a while back about how I see my life and attitude about life as sine wave. It goes up and it goes down. The amplitude isn’t too steep, nor too deep. It’s a smooth wave that slowly goes up and down never too far from the y axis. What’s the y axis in this case? That’s me. That’s my attitude. Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down, but I’m never too far from the “norm” or the standard. And the standard, that y axis is on the positive side of the graph. 

What I mean is generally I’m happy. Usually I’m positive. 

The other day, after dealing with the after effects of a bad haircut, a full day at school, and a disappointing practice on the football field, the younger boy came home and just cried. This kiddo is usually our tough nut, so this was completely out of character. Parents had to jump to action and part of that action included a talk by dad during a bike ride to school the next day. 

Our dog was due to go to the vet for surgery, so I started with that. I told him to think about what a bad day she was about to have. I told him that no matter what, there’s always someone out there having a worse day that you are. It’s a good message to keep in mind. 

• I’m strapped with work at this point. I don’t know why, but it seems as though every project I’m on is going poorly, requires, help, and need my focus. 
• My wife was just told that the job she loves, and has flourished in for the last few years, is coming to an end. She had to find a new job by the end of the year. That’s a HUGE challenge for her and for the family. 
• I’m waiting for my data to come in from my study. It’s a wait and see game. It’s no fun, I have no control and I have to wait. And even once it comes in, and I know it won’t be as positive as I hope, I have to finish writing the dissertation with it. Once it’s written I have to defend it in a meeting that’s about as stressful as the proposal meeting a few months ago. So I have the writing (huge chore) and the defense (huge stress) to look forward to. 
• Politics at work are crazy. I struggle with that side of things. I hate politics and the underhanded ness that comes along with office work and organizations. 
• I’m no working out. Bad back. I haven’t had back issues for years. Will these go away. Sure, but at the moment it sucks and not being able to go for a run or lift weights screws up my demeanor. PLUS, I’ve lost probably 10 pounds. So I live in a state of constant hunger. I’m ready to eat real food and have a cocktail!
• I have a HUGE meeting with a HUGE client today, and among many things, they want a legal sign off on a section of the training we are developing to move forward. I was told last night, we will not be getting that legal sign off. So, it’s going to be a tough meeting for the person in charge . . . Yep that’s me.
• Today my car was broken into. They stole about what? $1000 worth of stuff? There’s the loss of the stuff, but there’s also the feeling of vulnerability. It sucks. AND the person I would have turned to with all of this stuff, ain’t around to take this load off. 

So that’s it. That’s my litany. And you know what? Compared to others, even with all of that, I’m still quite lucky. 

I’m reading The Gulag Archipelago right now. You want to hear about someone who’s having a tough time? That’s anyone who was arrested in communist Russia and sent to a gulag in Siberia for decades. Hearing about the challenges of those guys makes my little bullet list up there seem inconsequential. 

So today, before that big, tough meeting I know won’t go well, after finding my car ransacked, I’m sitting her, breaking the diet, and enjoying a nice long relaxing coffee in a coffee shop and taking a moment to write and smile at other customers who are going about their days, and trying to re-center and get my y axis back up well into the positive. 

Are there times when I think my line of positivity might dip lower on the positive scale? Sure. Are there times when that dip might coincide with the sine way of day to day attitude dipping too? You bet. But still, think about that graph for a prisoner in a gulag and you should see that overall, even a bad day at school where people make fun of your hair cut and you don’t get the starting position you hoped, isn’t all that bad.