Big Problem, Little Problem

"He passed away, said the nurse at the counter. The nurse held the hairbrush and kept looking at her. Are you a friend of the family or what?" pg 78. Many times we fail to notice the circumstances we are living and how much better they are from those that other are people are going through. We consider small problems to be a disaster, and we tend to stress out and think of life as something horrible, when really what we are living is paradise compared to what others are. For us to really get to understand why it is that we tend to look at everything in a negative way we have to understand that it is usually because we always want to reach perfection. At that moment, what really was happening to Scottie was not that big of a deal compared to what was happening to the other family with Franklin. As mentioned by Howard: "Until now, his life had gone smoothly and to his satisfaction." pg 62. Both Ann and Howard were accostumed to living a happy life, so any small problem turned into a big one, even if at the very end it turned out to be one.

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If we didn't want everything to be perfect, but rather considered everything perfect, we could get to seeing everything in a positive way. Small problems would become opportunities and big problems would become learning experiences. Living a happy life would be something permanent, where looking at small problems in a way in which we see them as something not that bad would be an advantage. Our life is determined not by the things that we encounter, but on how we recieve and live them.