It's All Relative

On a recent drive, I was amused by an experience I had. I was cruising down the freeway at about 65 miles an hour, feeling frustrated by the drivers in front of me who were preventing me from driving 70+ MPH (speed limit was 70, by the way). I felt like I was crawling.

A while later, off the freeway, I was on a country road and found myself behind a guy in an old pick up truck. When we had to climb hills, our speed slowed to around 20 MPH. It was excruciatingly slooooooow. I'm not the most patient of people, so this was actually painful for me.

When the driver finally turned his old clunker off the road and I was able to speed up to 50 MPH, I felt like I was flying! I felt like I was driving incredibly fast. My frustration was gone!

That's when I started chuckling. Only a short time before, 65 MPH had seemed excruciatingly slow. Now 50 felt like nirvana to me!

How often do we get frustrated by circumstances, that in another situation would be considered a blessing? I think we'd be well served to remember this the next time we get bent out of shape about something in our lives. There is always a way it could be worse. There is always someone who is worse off than we are. I guess this falls under the 'count your blessings' line of thinking.

It's all relative. How we feel about something is all rooted deeply in our perspective and our 'reaction' to the situation. We can't control what happens to us, but we can control our perception and our reaction to it.