Reality check

Self-pity is a trap I easily fall into. There are days in which I constantly feel sorry for myself: my nose is too long, the amount of money on my bank account too small, the weather is foul, my friends nowhere to be found and my love life miserable. The heating does not work as it should, nor does the computer. Complain, complain, complain is all I do. And, to be fair to myself, I am not the only one.

Life, though, has a way of making people see things in perspective. To-day offered me various opportunities. This morning I was asked, for instance, to translate a document for Haïti. It was about turning a family car into a shelter. Very practical instructions but heartbreaking nonetheless. Here I am worrying about mortgages and perhaps having to move to a smaller place. Well, odds are whatever place that might be will be larger than a car! This afternoon I helped a private individual from Iraq fill out a form. Well, I helped in the sense that I translated the questions. The man clearly felt rather uneasy about the time he had spent in military service in the late eighties. The endless list of questions made him angry. "You people do not understand. We had no choice. If you failed to show up for three days you got shot and your parents had to pay for the bullet." All my legal arguments (e.g. that one of the reasons for all those questions is the wish to collect a body of evidence so that culprits can be prosecuted) are meaningless during moments like those. They do not help.

The only positive outcome of these clashes with harsh realities is that they put a stop to indulging in self-pity. And pave the way for a far more positive attitude.