This is a tricky idea because you really don’t know what you have escaped, do you? I mean, you know physically what you have escaped to some degree. You know if you had fallen off that cliff instead of that pregnant nudist hiker you would very likely get a whole bunch of broken bones, scrapes, cuts, and probably more. But do you know everything you might have escaped? What if the pregnant nudist hiker met the love of her life in the form of the paramedic who treated her? What if she wrote a book about her accident and her transformation from pregnant nudist hiker to world renowned Doctor of Broken Bones and became wealthy from speaking on the Broken Bone conference circuit? What if when she fell she actually landed on a beached whale no one had seen and because of her the whale was rescued and put back to sea?
So, what I am saying is this quote should be ignored, right? No, I am not saying that. I am saying whether you escape something or don’t, you have the choice to be content and grateful. You have the choice to find the good in whatever it is you experience. You can be grateful you escaped death and the baby was safe or you can focus on how unfair life is that it allowed you to fall. You can be grateful you met a great paramedic or be angry at how long it took him to get to you. You can be grateful the whale was there to soften your fall or annoyed by how smelly the whale is.
What has happened recently that you chose to be grateful and content with instead of angry and annoyed? How did that affect the rest of your day?
I had a comment this morning on Friday’s napkin, the 5th in my series on Personal Finance. It was about retirement. The commenter (Betsy, the Zen Mama) talked about her father being about to retire and having no money and a house worth nothing. He is going to have to get a new job, but can’t find one yet. I hadn’t visited her blog recently so I went to take a look. She had a list of 25 gratitude quotes as her latest blog entry. This one caught my eye and mind. She’s a cool Zen Mama, you should check out her blog.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Anonymous