Today I had a very interesting conversation in which a scenario was presented:

Imagine your village or home town has been wiped out by some unexpected natural disaster.  Everything has been lost. Not human life, material possessions.  Houses, cars, furniture, clothes etc.

Following on from such a disaster it has been proven that there are two types of people:

Fifty percent of people are totally devastated as they have nothing.  They need to start again from scratch and just can’t believe that this happened to them and that they have lost everything.

The other fifty percent of people are also totally devastated but are  happy to be alive and see this as an opportunity to start again from scratch.  Everything they lost was just material.

Which one of the two groups do you fall into?

Apparently a study has been done in these type of situations and looked at how the two groups go about re-forming and how their thinking impacts them.

I kept thinking about this scenario all afternoon.  And what I realized is that this applies to anything in life.  Yes this scenario is quite extreme, the losing of an entire village.  However, the principles of the story can relate to many things that we are faced with in life.  It is basically another is your glass half full or half empty scenario.

In my case I didn’t lose my village but I lost the functions of my kidneys.  My organs have been wiped out by a natural disaster.  So do I take a poor me, I’m a victim mentality or do I celebrate the fact that I am lucky to be alive and do whatever it takes to stay alive?

There are moments, I won’t lie, when I do feel a bit sorry for myself.  For a couple of months I was in quite a dark place trying to get my head around what organ failure means to me, and how I was going to live my life with such an illness.  I believe I have climbed my way out of that dark place however I still allow myself moments of grief and a cry when it all gets a bit too hard.  I can’t put a mask on everyday and be smiley happy.

But overall I believe I have chosen the path of life and am willing to do whatever it takes to live.  I will have surgery to make a super artery.  I will inject myself with bone marrow making potion.  I will take pills and do regular tests.  I will eventually live on a machine until the miracle days arrives when I have been lucky enough to receive a kidney.

I recognize that this could have been worse.  I could be dead.  But I am not.  And I know I need to embrace this second chance at life and do something wonderful.  I know I need to be happy and live a full life.

I am trying everyday to be a glass half full type of person.  Every now and then I might spill a drop and be a bit down.  But these days I am not down for long.

If my village was wiped out, I would miss all the nice things that I worked really hard for and all the photos and memorabilia that reminded me of special moments.  But I would be thankful that myself and my family were still alive and we get to rebuild a new life for ourselves.  It wouldn’t be easy.  But as I get older I am coming more to the realization that life is just an endless path of situations that we need to work through to keep moving on our journey.  They may be big or they may be small situations but it is all about how we go about dealing with these situations that makes us who we are.