Living in La-La-Land (Llllamas)

A posting by the infamous Vex about thinking about "the children" (you know, the metaphorical ones) and not just yourself led me to post part of an e-mail from the Man in Baghdad I got yesterday. He’s describing a particularly old village in Iraq:

“the downside is only 1/2 hour of water a day and almost no electricity. water splurts through this one pipe at some unpredictable time and they all jam taps into it through holes they've punched, and try to fill tanks. it's a community thing. quick mobilization.”

Somehow that made me inexplicably miserable when I first read it yesterday. Only half an hour of water? Horrible. What a terrible life for these people. Today, upon reading it again, I feel somehow ridiculous. I mean, who am I to feel terribly for people who are working their asses off to make their lives better, when all I do these days is lament my own pitiful unhappiness with things other people—say, in tiny villages in Iraq—would feel blessed to have to deal with?

Onward and upward for those who try. It is a sorrowful journey for the self-defeating.