When Hell rides your morning train the day goes down hill from there. Running late, spilled coffee, broken ink pen, wrong brief case, dead cell phone, rain on a "clear" day, no umbrella, speeding bus splashed you from the crotch down, soaked to the bone.
At the office, you find there is still a desk under all the files. In fact, the work from last Friday is still there. It wasn't distro'd. Not only that, your partner in crime took sick, had a dying relative, or some such bullshit and...lucky you...left you all his work...which hasn't been distro'd either.
Welcome to Monday. We settle into what will be a bad day of biblical proportions. We know this because we have a sliding scale of what is a good day and which days make you think taking your own life would be less painful.
This is the relativity of Misery.
Whether you are from Melbourne, New York, or Berlin the scale is essentially the same. We are gifted with the luxury of defining our (In)tolerable extremes. This is the privilege of a first world nation. We have the means to mitigate the evil that is done to us whether it is man-made aggravation or the privations of geography and climate.
My personal scale of misery is an artificial bubble. I try to remind myself of that every time I think of the global infant mortality rate (a little less than ten million a year) or the millions of parents who struggle and weaken themselves simply to provide their child something to eat...this week. I'm not trying to shame myself or anyone for that matter. The welfare of the world is not a burden that I can shift. But I can remind myself of the vast disparity in wealth and comfort between me and and a dying sub-Saharan child. I can remind myself every time that I am "miserable" that I truly have no point of reference to define true misery.
There is a song by Adu Sade called "Pearls" that speaks eloquently of misery, of the quiet strength of women, and the brutality of a random life. This is misery. And if I were suddenly planted in this life I would surely expire in nothing more than a tiny march of days. I have never experienced the hell of having no control or the randomness of a living nightmare influenced by forces I cannot understand. Next time I think my world is crashing in on me I'll remember this song...and take a sick day when that bastard comes back to work.
Pearls Lyrics
There is a woman in Somalia
Scraping for pearls on the roadside
There's a force stronger than nature
Keeps her will alive
That's how she's dying
She's dying to survive
Don't know what she's made of
I would like to be that brave
She cries to the heaven above
There is a stone in my heart
She lives a life she didn't choose
And it hurts like brand-new shoes
Hurts like brand-new shoes
There is a woman in Somalia
The sun gives her no mercy
The same sky we lay under
Burns her to the bone
Long as afternoon shadows
It's gonna take her to get home
Each grain carefully wrapped up
Pearls for her little girl
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
She cries to the heaven above
There is a stone in my heart
She lives a life she didn't choose
And it hurts like brand-new shoes
