I just fin­ished watch­ing the excel­lent doc­u­men­tary by Charles Fer­gu­son, No End in Sight [ offi­cial | Wiki | IMDb ] and it really got me think­ing. Now, I try not to dis­cuss pol­i­tics of any sort here because the sub­ject as a whole aggra­vates me, and I'm not about to change that pol­icy now. With that said, when look­ing at a sub­ject as wide in scope and breadth as this film, it can make one — as it has for me — reflect on their own life and real­ize just how insignif­i­cant the errata really is.

We all play the vic­tim some­times. Truth be told, I'm prob­a­bly guilty of this more than most, but per­haps not as much as some. It's the Amer­i­can way, after all: blame an "evil" cor­po­ra­tion or group or per­son for some­thing you've done wrong. We tend to look for an exter­nal cause because it's eas­ier than turn­ing the judg­men­tal focus around and really and truly look­ing at what it is within us that makes us sab­o­tage our­selves, that keeps us behind.

I'm not sug­gest­ing that I have an answer to this ques­tion. I don't. What I do know is that at the end of the day when­ever we go to sleep, most of us — and I'm def­i­nitely in this group more than I'd like to admit — don't take a moment before­hand to reflect and think on how truly great we, as Amer­i­cans, have it. We take things for granted. We manip­u­late the world around us to fit our ideal. We pur­sue every advan­tage by any means pos­si­ble, and then we whine and cry when things don't go our way.

And it's always some­one else's fault.

Have you ever noticed that gen­er­ally the only one present at a pity party is the host? Prob­a­bly. But that doesn't stop us from doing it. We find com­fort in this, and we will con­tinue to. I'm sure I will for some time after I fin­ish this post, despite my words here. I sup­pose that, to some degree, it's human nature.

I have prob­lems. So do you. Every­one does. But we must not lose sight of the impor­tant things. Sure, life sucks and what­not, and some­times oth­ers do sab­o­tage you and some­times it's your own fault, and some­times you just can't get ahead. But you've still got ten fin­gers and ten toes and oxy­gen still runs through your body and hope­fully, you'll still wake up tomor­row. With­out those lit­tle things, the "big" things that aggra­vate are insignificant.

If all of us who are lucky enough to live the way we do could remem­ber that sim­ple fact more often, there's no telling how far that would take us.