Life Lesson 16: Attitude is Everything!

“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.”
–-Khalil Gibran

One month into the lockdown in Spain, I saw my English neighbor Ray walking his white terrier in a park near our house. I, too, was walking our dog, Tess, a bodeguero-jack russell mix we adopted from a rescue shelter. Standing about two meters apart, as now recommended by the government here, Ray asked me how I was doing.

“I am so bored,” I replied.

“Really. I am busy.”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He had recently built bookshelves next to mailboxes in the neighborhood so people in the community could easily donate books as well as find books to read. Before he replied, I thought perhaps he is busy doing similar projects at home.

“Well, I’m reading books,” he said.  

“Me too,” I replied.

“And I’m watching some movies,” he added.

“I’m doing that too.”

“I’m taking my dog for walks.”

“Me too.”

“Don’t you miss going out to eat at restaurants or having a drink at a café?” I asked.

“Of course, I miss that. But I don’t think about that now. I think about what I have, rather than what I am missing.”

Well, I thought. Ray is teaching me a lesson here. I need to focus on what I have right now and be grateful for that, rather than suffer by focusing on what I am missing. He is keeping busy doing the exact same things as me and says he is busy rather than bored! So I took that as a sign that I need to focus more on what I am grateful for and not on what I lack during this lockdown.

Here is what I am grateful for right now.

• I am doing one hour of yoga Monday through Friday on Zoom via teacher instruction. I only did yoga once a week before the lockdown.
• I am in good health as is my husband. At least two people we know have had covid-19. One of them was hospitalized in Scotland while the other was told not to go to the hospital in Torrevieja because there were too many people already there with the virus.
• I am not dealing with this lockdown alone. I am facing it with my husband of 32 years. I know two women in my choir who are dealing with this alone. Both of them are widows whose husbands died in the last two years.
• We are retired and have enough money coming in from our pensions and social security that we can weather this economic storm. Many people we know are struggling and money is very tight. Some have lost jobs and have little or no savings to tide them over. They have children to feed.
• We have our loving dog Tess and our playful ginger cat Rua, who we rescued from an Irish shelter, to keep us company during this painful period of social isolation.

Life Lesson: Now, more than ever, it’s really important to be grateful for what we do have. The lockdown in Spain won’t last forever. But an attitude of gratitude can help us endure this difficult time and any future times of adversity. Learning this important lesson is something we can all be thankful for.