I Can't Complain

To tell the truth, I can't complain. Look, lots of people have it tough. I don't have it tough. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, sometimes things happen that I don't like so much, but life isn't all peaches and cream after all, right? I get up in the morning and turn on the news. Sometimes the news is really depressing, but there's no point in getting depressed about the news. If I were to get depressed about the news I'd be depressed all the time, and who wants to be depressed all the time? Well, maybe there's a subset of depressives who actually, deep down, want to be depressed all the time, but I'd bet most depressives are pretty depressed about being depressed all the time. Not for me. No thank you.  I just want to be happy, if possible, and if happy isn't possible, content will have to do. I turn off the news, throw on some clothes and go out. Sometimes it's a nice, sunny day, and that makes me happy, or if not really happy, at the very least a sunny day makes me smile, and that's something. A cloudy day doesn't make me smile, but I try not to let a cloudy day get me depressed, because I know that cloudy days make lots of people depressed, it's a condition called SAD, and I don't want to have SAD or be sad.  One cloudy day, on the street, I run into a friend. All right, not really a friend, an acquaintance, a casual acquaintance at that, but still, I'm glad to see him. “How are you doing?” I ask the casual acquaintance.

“Lousy, awful,” he says. “I lost my job, my wife was hit by a car and is in intensive care, and my house is in foreclosure.”

“Keep your sunny side up,” I say, and walk away. No way I'm wasting my time with a downer I hardly know.