On January 7, 2017, a gunman opened fire in the Fort Lauderdale,
\nFlorida airport killing 5 people in the baggage area.<\/p>\n
What makes this personal for me is that my mother and her
\nboyfriend were standing in that same baggage claim in the same
\nairport one week earlier.<\/p>\n
Many people, and I am one of them, complain too much over minor
\nthings.<\/p>\n
For instance, I lose my cool when the traffic going into NYC is
\nat a standstill or my Internet service goes down for 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
Yet if my mother had left for Florida a week later, she might be
\ndead today.<\/p>\n
Global terrorism has made it clear that whoever said “don’t sweat
\nthe small stuff” had it right.<\/p>\n
The week before my mom went to Florida, I was in an automobile
\naccident that totaled my car — on Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, I was not seriously hurt — not a scratch on me,
\nthough I had some bruises.<\/p>\n
Was I upset that my car, which I loved, was destroyed?<\/p>\n
No, because after all, it’s just a car.<\/p>\n
I have no doubt that some other people had car accidents that
\nsame evening — and were seriously injured or even killed. Game
\nover.<\/p>\n
So complaining over the demise of a 2008 Prius seems to me rather
\nsilly.<\/p>\n
Not being a natural Pollyanna, I feel funny saying this, but it’s
\ntrue: any day you wake up healthy, with food to eat and roof over
\nyour head, in a house with working heat, is a good day.<\/p>\n
I close with this Scottish proverb quoted by David Ogilvy: “Be
\nhappy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On January 7, 2017, a gunman opened fire in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida airport killing 5 people in the baggage area. What makes this personal for me is that my mother and her boyfriend were standing in that same baggage claim in the same airport one week earlier. Many people, and I am one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1087"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1090,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions\/1090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}