Say it with me, because I’m guessing you do too. We all have “enough,” even, more than “enough” to make us happy.
Reading this Atlantic Monthly piece from July 2012 reminds me of this fact. The author’s son is disabled and she describes how she cares for him and is still happy. This is the kind of view into life that no student in first year facing an unplanned pregnancy can have. I wish this author would do public speaking. Maybe she does, for all I know. It’s an inspirational story.
For all the people who are puzzled by my seeming happiness, I’ll be glad to let them know my “secret.” I’m not in denial, I’m not on antidepressants, and I don’t live in a fantasy world. I have a wonderful husband and I am pursuing a career I’ve dreamed of since I was nine years old. I have a beautiful son, friends, and a working stove. I am not paraplegic. I have parents who, through luck and fate, had me here in the United States, and not in North Korea. I live in a time where my awful vision can be corrected with glasses. I am a college graduate. I am never hungry unless I choose to be.
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Faye adds: You know those snapshot memories we probably all have from when we were kids? A moment captured in memory, without much context?
I have one where I’m young – young enough to be playing with some toy on the floor as my dad watches the news. At one point, my dad turns to me and asks me whether I realize how lucky we are to have been born in Canada, and to live here.
As a child, I had no context for what his comment meant, but for some reason that brief exchange stuck with me. I remember it each Canada Day and every time I read about something truly horrific happening elsewhere in the world.
(And yes, in this same country, a doctor suggested to my mother that an abortion might be the best response to her pregnancy with me, but I digress.)
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