I Was Lucky Enough to Be on The “Easy” Side of The Table

Have you ever participated in a team of beautiful people who volunteer to provide food to homeless people in a town?

My experience recently led me to the following thoughts.

How lucky I was to stand on the “easy” side of the table!

I never considered myself a lucky person. Many misfortunes have hurt me and my family and every step I have tried to make in this life has been difficult. But I have been lucky enough in this life to overcome any pain, any accident and any sickness or death with decency, ease or assistance. I have been sad and hurt, but not desperate and lost, forgotten and abandoned.

I have been lucky enough to complain about the rain that ruined my plans, but I was not forced to sleep under it. I have been lucky enough to complain to that waiter who was late because I was hungry, but I never had to stand hungry in a queue for the common meal and wait for people to offer me food. I have been lucky enough to complain and get upset about the prices of the gas and electricity, my shitty roommate, the untasty food, the day off I couldn’t get, or the many assignments I had to do.

Yes, those complaints are reasonable and each of us has the right to experience and give weight to his own problems based on his needs. As Abraham Maslow has pointed out, once people have satisfied their basic needs, they naturally attempt to satisfy their psychological and self-fulfilment needs.

However, we should take a moment sometimes to realise that the fulfilment of those basic needs of food, warmth, and safety have usually been succeded by luck. It is like before we even were born someone touched that wheel of fortune and offered us a unique starting point in life. The place of our birth, our colour, the family we were born in, the environment, or our health condition were the results of that wheel of fortune. But somehow those results define how far we get, or how hard we need to struggle through life to get that far.

Success is not just a matter of hard work and not everyone gets what he/she deserves.

And if during life our choices are those that drive us closer to happiness, and to success, and to ease, one should consider how easy those choices can be made and who is there to provide us with choices from which we can choose.

It is not about underestimating our problems and concerns. It is not about feeling sorry for anyone. It is not about judging the decisions of anyone or putting blame on people, organisations or governments.

It is about taking a moment to think of how lucky we are to stand on the “easy” side of the table. “Easy” side because we are there with the comfort that after our volunteering time we have all the time and all the help we need for complaining, for working, for enjoying, and for choosing.

And considering how lucky we have been, we can embrace this good fortune, by helping in any way possible those who might have not been provided or cannot be provided with the privileges of our luck.