There's a tear in your eye and I'm wondering why, for it never should be there at all...

Four Leaf Clover
Originally uploaded by Tomitheos

I hope the luck 'o the Irish smiles on all of you today...

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about how lucky I am. Hmmmm... perhaps luck isn't the right word though; after all, as Greg Kinnear so smugly says in Little Miss Sunshine, "Luck is the name losers give to their own failings". :) But I digress (as usual). Lucky, fortunate, blessed, whatever. You name it, I'm definitely feeling it these days. I suppose I have experienced something of a paradigm shift while on this trip. (NB: that's "'pair-a-dime", not "pa-'ri-duh-gum"... in-joke for all you speechies). I'm not over-fond of that term actually, but I think it fits here. I can feel my perspective changing. I would say that in general I tend to be a "glass half-full" kind of gal, but I think I've joined the "my cup runneth over" camp.

You'll see I've tagged this post with "rambles", a label that shows up rather frequently here. This is a little just thinking out loud, but I also want to write this now, as I'm feeling it, so as not to forget it. I hope that when I return home I will continue to recognize this. I think about the village I've spent the last several weeks in, and the people there, and their lives, and the difficulties they face, and the fact that most families will struggle to pay for their children to attend high school (the cost of which incidentally is somewhere around $200/year). I think back to Majda, the woman I met in Mostar, who was forced to leave her home in Bosnia for several years during the war there. There are countless other examples like these, and we don't even have to look outside the borders of our own country, our state, or our county for that matter, to find them.

When I think about the things that most of us worry about, fret about, fight about, cry about, I am struck by how trivial most of these things are. Now, I know it's all relative, and I know I have the luxury of being on an all-expenses paid year-long vacation, so it's not exactly like life is kicking my ass right now, but seriously.... think about it. Most of what we struggle with are what I think might best be described as the consequences of our opportunities. Maybe you're stressed out about your job, maybe the mortgage on your house is too expensive, maybe you didn't get invited to a party... I don't know. I guess I'm feeling like all we have are "luxury problems" to borrow a favorite phrase of Cory's. I mean, if you're healthy, and all your basic needs are being met (you know food, shelter, safety, all that) isn't the rest kind of just gravy? I'm just sayin'...

I hope you're feeling lucky today too.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!