New Rope, Same Lament

Some of us (= me) can get so spoiled so fast, it's shameful. When I opened our kitchen door yesterday morning on the way to the garage to drive to work, I was taken aback to realize it was raining. By the time I got to work, a twenty minute drive, it rained really hard and then tapered off, but there wasn't a torrential downpour going on when I stepped outside to start my day. Not that you'd have known it by my reaction. 

I just mentioned the other day we've had a more than dry summer. Point in fact, the meteorologists tell me we hadn't had rain since aught three; eighteen aught three (those guys really need to watch their drinking). Welcome to Hyperbole, population: me. Seriously, we hadn't had very much rain at all and I'm sure we have a precipitation deficit probably not on the scale of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, but for a lot of people engaged in farming, as well as all the ducks, it was good news.

And there I am, kind of pouting about the rain, both boo and boo-hoo. If someone routed a note on Sunday about it, I never got the memo and there I was almost about to get soaked except for the umbrella and the overhang. Considering at any given moment there are probably a billion (with a "B") people eking out an existence in an arid environment who barely have the moisture to wet their lips, I should have been embarrassed to be me. 

We're all a little like this, I think (and sort of hope, otherwise I really am a sad creature). We talk a lot about 'adapt and overcome' but all things being equal, we'd much prefer it if you did all the former while we take care of the latter. You can get comfortable with just about any situation-it's only when it changes that there's a problem. 

I've read where Newton's first law of motion offered that a body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Each of us continues to plod down the trail we've carved out for ourselves here on the ant farm unless or until something causes us to change, and very often we're not happy about having to change even when we know we had no other choice.

Sometimes the difference between comfortable and comfortably numb is hard to spot and harder to appreciate. That's why the difference between a rut and grave is often only the depth of the habit and the amount of rainfall that gathers in each.
-bill kenny