Luck

Sometimes I wonder if there isn't a die thrown every time a child is born, and that dice roll determines their fortune in life.
Something I've realized: I am lucky. I get good grades and my family is wonderful; no hurricane will strike my Minnesota home. My friends love me and every time I crave chocolate I have the money to go to Walgreens and buy some.
There's a song by Regina Spektor that frequently gets stuck in my head called Laughing With. It's  about perspective- "No one laughs at God in a hospital. No one laughs at God in a war. No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor... But God can be funny at a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke..." The lyrics can be interpreted in countless ways, but ultimately they make the point that it's easy to treat life lightly when everything is going well, but then a disaster strikes and nothing is funny anymore.
I struggle to find my place in the world because it doesn't seem fair to others that my life is so good. Maybe I'm just an optimist, but it seems to me that I'm pretty lucky compared to someone who lost their home to nature. So I volunteer and I go on mission trips in hopes that that will even the balance, steady the scale. Is that enough?
At 6:00 this morning we left for our worksites, and as we drove I saw an elderly woman sleeping under a thick green blanket beneath one of the large New Orleans bridges, and I thought immediately of my comfy bed at home underneath all the posters and pictures on my walls. Or my dorm room at Tulaine this week- my most serious complaint is that the AC is on a little bit too high. I complain about these things because the discomforts annoy me- how I was cold while I slept, or how getting up at 5:30 seemed utterly ridiculous when I first found out. And I think complaining is okay as long as you don't do it too much, but it's also true that many, many people have immensely more troubling things to complain about.
I'm not drawing any grand point here, this is just how I think. I believe that it's good to question my place in life, and do get this sense of injustice when I see people "less fortunate than me," a phrase I've heard many times.
This trip has made me think, and I love thinking. I've been quite happy this week; I have time to read, there are a lot of cats in this city (I've seen sixteen so far), and we've been helping people, which feels great.
Life is good.
-Lian Simmer