Tuesday, May 27, 2008

A matter of perspective

Happiness really is all in your mind. For example, I was stuck behind a logging truck on my way to work last week. I was already late, and now I was stuck going less than the speed limit down a winding, two-lane country road that took half an hour to drive under the best of circumstances. It’s times like that when one is well served by cultivating a near psychotic detachment from reality, so that previously serious problems become trivial, or even helpful.

I realized that the logging truck was actually doing me a favor. After all, I could get in a fatal accident at any speed above 20 MPH, but thanks to his inability to make it up steep hills, there would be no danger of that. And, it gave me time to practice my Queen Elizabeth wave (you know the one, it goes elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist, etc.) in case I ever find myself in a parade.

It worked so well that I tried to change my perspective on other issues in my life:

-Our well pump was supposed to break. If we had a reliable source of clean water, I wouldn’t have been forced to meet my next door neighbors, who are really great people (as evidenced by the fact that they ran over 300 feet of hose from their house to ours). It also helped to teach me about the importance of water conservation. It’s NOT a renewable resource, people!

-All these bills help me to “keep it real.” Money would just go to my head. And this way, I can really be sure that I’ve got my priorities in order. Who needs both clean clothes AND a hot meal, right? Because that’s just getting greedy.

-Yeah, our heat pump doesn’t cool our house at all, and may even be broken. But I could stand to sweat off some unwanted pounds; I stopped being able to see my ribs, and it made me feel totally chubby. Also, this solves our problem of not having any hot meals.

-These ants aren’t infesting our house. They’re graciously sacrificing themselves to keep the hordes of spiders around here well fed. As long as there are plenty of ants blundering around and walking into the spider webs hidden in the walls and behind the furniture, the spiders won’t go back to roaming the halls where I can see them.

-And we need a lot of hulking spiders looming in the dark corners of the house. If anything, they have to be BIGGER, because at their current, half-the-size-of-my-fist stature, they can barely hold their own against all the wasps that set up shop outside.

-And those wasps. Thank god the wasps are here because—

You know what? I can’t do this anymore. If I keep this up, I’d have to give myself a wedgie and shove my head in the toilet, because I’d be completely insufferable.

2 comments:

  1. LOL Looking on the bright side of life ain't always easy, eh? At least you seem to have a sense of humor about it. Or is it just from my perspective that it's funny?

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  2. Yeah, I'm trying to be funny because at this point my options are to laugh about it or to break down and cry.
    Luckily, my wife figured out how to fix our heat pump. I feel slightly emasculated, but it's a feeling I can live with since it goes hand in hand with feeling refreshingly cool.

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