A handy bit of perspective
Jan. 24th, 2005 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperI was all set to bitch this morning about the scale going right back up to 170 this morning (post-sushi and post-birthday-cake), a situation which was quite frustrating given that I read 167.5 yesterday, but I got handed a bit of perspective at the bus stop downtown. I saw a tall, thin woman standing next to me, and first noticed that like many folks going about their business downtown, she was nattily dressed in a nice sort of business-y way: gray jacket, dark slacks, scarf around her neck. She had what looked like a resume portfolio tucked under her right arm, but something about it looked off to me.
Then I noticed her right arm was gone beneath the elbow. At first my brain thought it was just a trick of my vantage point and that she must have just had her hand curled around to the front of her. But no. It was actively gone. The right sleeve of her jacket was pushed up to just above where her arm had been lost, presumably so as to not let it dangle sloppily down beside her.
As I got on the bus I thought about that. And I realized that if I were that woman, I could still work; as I learned in the summer of 2003 when I broke my arm, I can type quite adequately with one hand. I could still write. But I wouldn't be able to play my instruments. Not a single instrument in my possession could be played with just one hand.
I can get these pounds back off, probably even by the end of the month, as long as I keep judiciously to my Plan and go very carefully through what's left of the cake. That woman, however, won't be getting her hand back.
It's times like this that affirm for me why I am agnostic rather than atheist. Call it what you will--God, the Universe, Fate, Fortune, the vagaries of life, whatever--there just comes every so often a sign that you've been handed a clue. And in this case, it's a clue I deeply appreciate. With the exception of half of my thyroid, I've still got all the body parts with which I was born, and they're all in reasonably good working order.
All things considered, a couple of post-birthday-cake pounds really aren't all that bad.
Then I noticed her right arm was gone beneath the elbow. At first my brain thought it was just a trick of my vantage point and that she must have just had her hand curled around to the front of her. But no. It was actively gone. The right sleeve of her jacket was pushed up to just above where her arm had been lost, presumably so as to not let it dangle sloppily down beside her.
As I got on the bus I thought about that. And I realized that if I were that woman, I could still work; as I learned in the summer of 2003 when I broke my arm, I can type quite adequately with one hand. I could still write. But I wouldn't be able to play my instruments. Not a single instrument in my possession could be played with just one hand.
I can get these pounds back off, probably even by the end of the month, as long as I keep judiciously to my Plan and go very carefully through what's left of the cake. That woman, however, won't be getting her hand back.
It's times like this that affirm for me why I am agnostic rather than atheist. Call it what you will--God, the Universe, Fate, Fortune, the vagaries of life, whatever--there just comes every so often a sign that you've been handed a clue. And in this case, it's a clue I deeply appreciate. With the exception of half of my thyroid, I've still got all the body parts with which I was born, and they're all in reasonably good working order.
All things considered, a couple of post-birthday-cake pounds really aren't all that bad.
