Perspective in Times of Cankles and Other Ailments

Are you starting to get an idea as to where I might be heading with this post? Yes, that's right. I have cankles. To the uneducated, cankles are where your calves and ankles become one. Whilst the image to the right might not truly portray my situation, you get the drift.


I also had a headache all day. A semi low-grade one that just dragged on. I'm not prone to such an ailment and I can't imagine what it would be like to live with chronic episodes. Urgh. Suffice to say, I think my husband would disown me. 


While we are getting the complaints out of the way, I think my readers should know that our shoebox doesn't have airconditioning. It retains heat very nicely (which I am hoping is a bonus for winter). If I sit on our leather couches, I stick to them. If I lay down on our bed, ants crawl all over me as there is a big nest outside the shoebox. Escaping this heat is impossible. Given my pregnant state, I take this weather a little more seriously than most. If I were in Sweden, I would walk around naked. Sadly, I think our neighbours would report me for visual assault if I were to do that here in Sydney!


It has been a long and grumpy day. I have been self-centred, focused on my own issues rather than maintaining appropriate perspective. Given this is Sunday, a day that should be reserved for rest and reflection, it is appropriate that I bring myself (and possibly you) back to a sense of just the comforts that we have here in the wealthier nations of earth.

1. Right now, almost a billion people on the planet don't have access to clean, safe drinking water. That's one in eight of us.  (www.charitywater.org)
2. 8.1 million
 children under the age of five die each year, mostly from preventable and treatable causes. (www.one.org) 
3. 358,000 mothers 
die each year due to pregnancy-related causes. (www.one.org)
4. Approximately 925 million people are hungry around the world today, an increase of an estimated 80 million people since 2008. (www.one.org)
5. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can expect to live substantially shorter lives than other Australians – up to 20 years less in some cases. (www.oxfam.org.au)
6. Babies born to Aboriginal mothers die at twice the rate of other Australian babies. And they experience higher rates of preventable illness such as heart disease, kidney disease and diabetes. (www.oxfam.org.au)

Ok, I will stop. I could go on all evening. It's really really hard to complain about my cankles or the lack of airconditioning in our shoebox when confronted with the reality of life for the majority on planet earth. 

How do you challenge yourself on 'tough' days? Do you even challenge yourself or like me, sometimes just give in to self-pity?