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The Relativity of MidLife Choices

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ferdinand-reus-photoEvery day the same. Yeah!

by Cari of Cari-Okie


I should really be getting ready for work, but I’m just not that into it. If it didn’t require getting up off the couch, showering and doing all that follows to try and make myself presentable to the world, it would be easier. There are so many things in each day that must be done again tomorrow and the next day over and over. Just think how much time we’d save if we didn’t have to shower, brush teeth, beautify (or at least de-uglify), do dishes and vacuum and bathe the dogs and do laundry and clip toenails and pluck eyebrows and, well you get the picture. What if each day we woke up to a world where all we got to do was learn and imagine and create and relate with the people we love. Would that be such a bad thing?

OK now I’m thinking of all the people I’ve met who wake up each morning in much more difficult circumstances and I’m feeling like a thankless complainer. I’ve shivered in a hut in Romania in the coldest weather I’ve ever known and talked with a father trying to keep his toddler son warm and fed with a few sticks for firewood and little else.

I’ve hovered in the doorway of a hovel in the largest slum in Kenya. No running water. The toilet is the ditch outside that runs disgustingly through the entire massive encampment. It’s hot. The flies are relentless. The smell is staggering. The one adult is trying to care for her children and her sister’s children. All eight of them living in this one-room, dirt-floor nightmare. She’s the last adult left in her family and she is HIV positive.

I’ve held a tiny, beautiful, blue-eyed baby girl in an abandoned shipping container in a temporary village made up entirely of abandoned shipping containers in Armenia. The mother, who was my age (37 at the time) looked like she was 60 and begged me to take her child. She and her husband were trying to survive with the remaining six children and they didn’t need another mouth to feed.

Well then. I guess I’m going to go shower now and celebrate my life. I have plenty to celebrate.

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January 21, 2009 90

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Found: FatCatchers Diary Discovered In the Garbage Behind Weight Watchers → ← Emma Thompson’s First Blog Post…talking about Last Chance Harvey

4 thoughts on “The Relativity of MidLife Choices”

  1. Allison says:
    January 29, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    Whew, made me think of Slumdog Millionaire. Great movie that’s really hard to watch. I’d say you’ve had enough adventure that the routine things of life might be a welcome contrast 🙂 I’ve found that I lose appreciation for most things unless I have the contrast. Even chocolate cake every day would get old if it weren’t for eating my brussel sprouts!

  2. MJ says:
    January 21, 2009 at 8:49 pm

    I guess we are very lucky to be living in a country where there is so much. Why don’t you write a book about your life? Sounds like it would be a GREAT adventure!

  3. Stephen says:
    January 21, 2009 at 8:13 pm

    You really should get out more. j/k 🙂

  4. Liz@Inventing My Life says:
    January 21, 2009 at 7:37 pm

    Whoa, I’m not sure if I’m depressed or uplifted after reading this post!

Comments are closed.

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