state of mind

Do you ever notice that how our day goes matters less on what happens during the day than on our frame of mind?

When I'm in a good mood, hearing a crazy guy rant on the el can be one of those things that I laugh off and mark down as a funny story to tell my friends.

But if I am in a bad mood, hearing a crazy guy rant on the el can be one of those things that makes me angry and sick of my commute and hate the city.

But it isn't the world that has changed... it is me. It's all in my head.

I've been having a rather kick-ass week, and it isn't because anything spectacular has happened that hasn't happened some other week. It is because I have been in a positive mind set.

Unfortunately, it can sometimes take negative things to remind me of how lucky I am. Seeing all the devastation in Japan has broken my heart. I was looking around as I was riding the el the other day and I thought of how lucky I was to be able to ride the el. To have power. To have heat. To have the city that I love still standing. To not be worrying about a nuclear meltdown.

I'm pretty damn lucky.

But then to top it off, I've also been thinking a lot about this girl Heather that I play volleyball against. She just had a massive stroke and heart attack and is mostly unresponsive in a hospital for a few weeks now. She was only 42 years old. Think of all the plans and dreams that she had for her future. Think of all the plans and dreams that her boyfriend had for the two of them.

Your life can change in the blink of an eye, and that's the thought that makes me appreciate every second I have.

If you are not in the right frame of mind, all the money and all the fame and all the accomplishments in the world, won't mean a thing. But if you are in the right frame of mind, the little things can make your life fulfilling and happy.

Things that made me happy this week:
* seeing the first spring flowers start to poke out of the ground
* getting to talk to my friend on the phone at a time that I don't usually get to talk to her
* going through a photo book with my brother and sister and laughing at old photos and our family in general
* doing an impressive dive at volleyball
* purchasing my plane ticket for reunion and having that to look forward to
* finding out that everyone else in my class also thought that the Salman Rushdie story we read was really difficult and confusing
* eating some of the best french fries ever
* mostly though my favorite things were just the little interactions that I had with people- talking to Kevin's five and eight year old while on the sideline of volleyball, joking with the girl who signed me up for my next writing class, laughing with my client about touching her butt (don't ask!) and teasing my sister about not understanding how her iphone works despite having had it for over a year.

These are the things that make life worth living.

Part of me wants to get a tattoo on the back of my hand, something that will remind me of how much I have and how quickly it can be lost. Something to make me appreciate what I have and stay in the right frame of mind so that every week will be like this week.