Spoiled?

I forget how spoiled I am sometimes. The other day I was talking to a good friend of mine who lives in California. He's going through some tough times. The company he works for is going bankrupt, jobs are scarce, he's had to move several times in the past year, and the future is looking grim for the guy. But he's not a whiner, he's a worker. He's no stranger to strife or blisters and his work ethic has always pulled him through the rough patches of his life. As he told me about what's going on with him, not once did it sound like he was complaining. It was more like, “this is what I'm dealing with and yep, I'm dealing with it.”

Now I've had a stressful past month. Without getting into it, there's been a few disappointments here and there. When the conversation between my friend and I began I was ready to vent a few things out. When he asked how I've been, I told I've been stressed. Just a warm up into the vent session. When he asked what's been stressing me out, in that moment the severity of what I was about to say compared to what I just heard from him clicked. I had a reality check and instantly my attitude changed. All I could say was “Petty...very petty things.”

Here's a guy who's handling a legitimate rough patch and there I was about to gripe about how money was tight and I couldn't go buy a new pair of pants and other things like that. Oh woe is me...

Another thing, I've been planning a vacation for the past several months. I wanted to do a few things but circumstances have changed and I have to cut out a lot of what I was planning to do and I may even cut my vacation short. I was feeling disappointed that I would have to fly home earlier than planned and then what would I do? Yeah...because coming back to Hawaii is such a horrible thing...

I was talking with a different friend of mine about vacation plans and ideas. He was kind of bummed that he wouldn't be able to take a vacation to the mainland and instead he's going to Maui for a few hiking excursions. I told him, “Ya know that's not bad at all. To the rest of the world that's a dream come true.” My friend nodded, smiled, and said, “Yeah good point.”

Getting caught up in the tediousness of daily routines has a tendency to put blinders on my eyes. I forget sometimes that I live in Hawaii. A place that most of the world considers paradise. Sure, paychecks aren't as big as I'd like them to be, things happen and plans change, things fall short of expectations sometimes, but I get by okay. It's really not that bad. Some could say I'm spoiled, and yeah...they'd have a good point.