A Message on Perspective
Yesterday was a rough day. Something so inconvenient happened that I let it ruin and readjust my entire day – my iPhone was broken. It wasn’t turning on, and I wasn’t able to make an appointment at the Apple store to have it repaired. After spending the entire day without my phone, I then spent the majority of my evening at home on the phone with Apple support, continually getting frustrated as I was making no headway.
After I reached the point where I was ready to chuck my $1,000 paperweight at the wall, I started laughing to myself. No, I wasn’t having a psychotic break, although my husband thought I was. Once my fit of giggles settled down, I explained to him the cause of my hysteria.
“How great is it that the worst thing to happen to me today is that my iPhone doesn’t work?”
I’m not sure what caused this “aha” moment, but what sent me into a fit of laughter was that I was letting a trivial “first-world” problem ruin my entire day and mood. Taking a mental step back and looking at the bigger picture, looking at the current state of the world, thinking of all the unfortunate families who lost their homes in the Bahamas with the recent hurricane humbled me. Here I was, in my own house, crying over my malfunctioning iPhone. What a life.
I shared this as my monthly message because I believe we must take a step back from problems that may seem like the end of the world and ask ourselves, “is it that serious? Is this really the worst thing that could be happening to me right now?” Gratitude should be the emotion that follows when something like this happens. We should be grateful that our biggest problems can be a broken phone or a bad day at work. Empathy should be the final emotion we experience, for those who have actual problems and things to worry about and it should move us to contribute something to the world that’ll make a difference in the lives of those who genuinely need it.
Here’s a link to donate to those who need assistance in the Bahamas.
