Blessed...

So as I was sitting at lunch today enjoying my chicken salad wrap on wheat and cottage cheese with pineapples (I know it sounds healthy, but believe you me it’s not…and add to it the toffee, coffee cake, and pasta salad I had for bfast/morning snacks and you have one FULL stephie) when I overhead/eavesdropped on/listened to a conversation 3 women employees were having at the table behind me. they were talking about their divorces and debt and scandalous relationships and it just hit me. I am so blessed. I am so spoiled. I have had an easy life.

As much as I stress over and whine about the stupid, yet important, things to me, at the end of the day…I know I have it good. I don’t have any college debt looming over my head. I don’t have any awful past relationships. My family loves me. I have great friends. My life has been cake.

SHALLOW EXAMPLE: I remember a conversation I had during a post-Thursday night lunch with friends one day during college. We had had super amounts of fun the night prior, and, as was tradition, had to meet around 1 on Friday (after sleeping in and skipping class) to recount the previous night’s festivities (it was usually at Noshville or Otter’s—yummy greasy food is the best hangover food!) and faux pas. So we sit and soak up the delicious sun in our oversized shades, sipping our diet cokes and pondering whether we should go buy some new designer jeans after our lunch, what new cars we should get upon graduation, how we should get our hair during our next appointment, the pros and cons of waxing styles, our random escapades with various guys the night before, what new Coach/LV bag is in our future, and whether or not one friend should go backpacking through Europe with her friend b/c well, she doesn’t really want to backpack and live roughly, but luxuriate and travel in style with one of us perhaps the next summer. “Oh Teeney, just wait and plan another trip for next year, one where you can shop and eat your way through Europe…” RIDICULOUS. For the majority of the population, a chance, ANY CHANCE, to travel overseas is a dream come true, and we are convincing her not to go because she might have to ‘rough it’ a bit, and that’s just not her style. Oh the plight of rich kids…and as we were leaving, I pointed out the ridiculously ludicrous nature of our conversation and how affected and ‘Vandy’ we must have seemed to anyone who overhead our extremely boisterous conversation that day. We laughed about it.

The thing is, none of us is really like that. But, somehow, in all the affluence and ridiculousness of college and of soaking up the good life (and money!) of those really really rich and affected people we went to college with, we BECAME that. My view of money is so skewed. $200 is ‘not bad’ for me to spend on a new pair of jeans. WHAT IS THAT?

So the problems I have encountered are problems central to the affluent, privileged population. My anxiety attacks centered around my ability to achieve, feelings of failure, the !DING! moment that I realized I might never be as well off as my parents are. An education and good old-fashioned hardwork does not a successful person guarantee anymore. During college I worried, not about being able to eat or pay the rent, but what my costume for our next sorority party should look like. And after, I worried about not getting my dream job, not being able to take weekend trips to see my friends, not performing up to the name on my degree…not knowing what to make of myself…I guarantee you, the average person doesn’t have time to sit and think themselves into craziness; they are out doing something to make ends meet. They don’t have time to wallow in a pit of self-pity when they have mouths to feed at home…

These ladies sitting behind me today don’t know the effect that they had on me. they don’t know that they made me once again, feel blessed beyond words for who I am, the people I have in my life, the experiences I had encountered, and for being me.