"Life is tough!".....Is it really?

I was talking to a friend on a busy day at the office and I said to her "I'm so busy. God, life is tough!"
She just smiled back at me and replied "Hey, you know life is a gift, right? Maybe you are not living it right!"

And that statement of hers has stuck with me for the last few days. And she is right. Life is indeed a gift, and being in the situation I am in, I have no right to complain. How tough I make my life is entirely and solely up to me. I am busy because I make myself so. I do have to work hard to pay for the lifestyle I chose. Now that's not to say that we shouldn't work hard. We should and all of us do, but then I have no business complaining!

I can understand if people in areas ravaged by famine, natural calamities and war complain about life. I guess they have a reason to. But not me. I always have the choice to move to a smaller house, to cut my expenses if life seems hard. But like many others, people (including me) tend to spread themselves too thin. Bigger homes, fancier cars, exotic vacations....the list never ends. Sometimes it's real tough to have a sensible balance between wants and needs. Depending on which way that balance tilts, will decide how much we have to work!

Sometimes the present seems hard because the past seems better than it was and the future looks tougher than what it probably will be. Sometimes we think ourselves to the brink of anxiety. Life is like school, with one difference.

In school, you are taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you are given a test that teaches you a lesson. ~ Tom Bodett

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Withdrawal symptoms of a "special" kind!!

A few days ago we celebrated the 25th wedding anniversary of a wonderful couple. It was a great party and I got to meet a lot of friends I hadn't seen in a while. Well, now the party is over and I'm going through a withdrawal. And along with me and my wife, are 5 other couples going through the same thing.

Let me explain. The six couples in question performed a little dance sequence at the party (which actually turned out pretty good!). The reason it turned out the way it did was that all of us got together to practice, starting about fifteen days before the event. Now let me rephrase that to tell you the truth. To practice was just an excuse to get together. So for about 5 or 6 times before the big occasion, we had so called "practice sessions", which we all knew were actually mini-parties. The dance practice would generally last a grand total of 15 minutes, and the other 3 hrs and 45 minutes would be......(you guessed it)....partying!!!! So that's the withdrawal I am going through. From a get-together almost every third day to just one party a week!! So these days when we meet, we all are looking for excuses for others to throw a party!

So why is it that we don't get tired of seeing the same people over and over again? I guess that could be a definition of friendship. No matter how often or frequently friends meet, the laughter that invariably envelops every person is fresh and genuine. Friendship is never defined by one big thing, its about thousands of those "little" things.

"We make friends not for who they are, but for how they make us feel."

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