Funny how life works. I was pretty sure that something would come along to help put my Met opera disappointment into some perspective, but little did I know that it would come so quickly or so powerfully. I had heard from someone that there was a huge article about Placido Domingo in yesterday’s New York Times, so I called my wife and asked her to please pick up a copy of it for me while she was out and about on her lunch break- which she did. And when I eagerly took the paper in hand yesterday afternoon and turned to the article in question, that’s really when I started feeling sorry for myself that I was not going to be one of the lucky few to be at the Met for this star-studded historic occasion.
This morning, that same issue of the New York Times was sitting on the kitchen counter, and I saw for the first time what I had brushed past yesterday- a haunting photograph right on the front page of a 3-month-old girl at a feeding center in Shivpuri, India. The picture is part of a story about how malnutrition among India’s children continues to be a terrible problem, even though the nation as a whole is experiencing such growth. Some of its smallest and most vulnerable citizens remain hungry.
Suddenly, missing the Met’s 125th Gala does not seem like quite the tragedy that it felt like just last night.
Funny how the gift of perspective can sometimes come crashing down on us quite unexpectedly like a cast iron skillet to the head.
God has a way of doing this.