My husband Jack lost his job a few months ago. Roughly translated that means I’ve been feeling sorry for myself a lot lately.
As I was driving down the road one day, lamenting my life situation, I passed a man and woman riding a tandem bicycle. I noticed that the woman was missing a leg. How truly awful, I thought. Not only did she have the hardship of dealing with only one leg, but certainly there must have been heartache dealing with whatever tragedy that caused the loss of limb in the first place. At that moment in time it occurred to me that the old saying is true: there is always someone worse off than you. I felt better.
But then I started thinking about how that chain works. Who was worse off than this woman and what was their malady? And who was worse off than that person? And that person? And that person? Surely the succession of people worse off than the one before had to end somewhere. Who exactly is this person who is the worst off in the entire world and what are his total number of afflictions? Is he a deaf, one-armed leper with scabies and a bad hair weave? Who lives in New Jersey?
Why doesn’t this person step forward? If he identified himself, he could make everyone else feel a lot better.
He sounds selfish.
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