Bleu

Today's smile-inducer : Counting one's blessings. 

When I was growing up, and when I didn't what I wanted, my mother would say " Well, count your blessings, and you'll realize your cup has runneth over ". Honestly, I could never understand that. I'm not getting that 3 feet dollhouse I've been wanting forever ? The world is ending ! Blessings ? What blessings ?! 

You know how they say that hindsight is always 20/20 ? Looking back, I realize how melodramatic things seem to be when you're right in the middle of the miasma, but when you take a step back and gain that aerial view, you see how things really are. The thing is, if that was true for something that seemed so important to us years ago, wouldn't the things we hold dear today fade as time goes by ? Why then do we hold so tightly to the things that irk us, and let the things that make us happy slip past unnoticed ? 

I took this picture at a construction that's happening behind the office. Every time I look at the workers at the construction, I see men who toil come sunshine or pouring rain because they believe that it is only by doing so that they can improve the circumstances of their life. I see fathers working hard for their children, young husbands wanting to get something for their new brides, and sons toiling to send some money home for an ailing mother. 

If they can do that, and yet listen to upbeat music, and joke and cajole ... what right do we have to complain about our comfy, cushy lives ? 

I know now what my mother meant all those years back. When you focus on the things that you do have, you lose sight of the things that you thought you wanted, because indeed, your cup has runneth over.