The story still haunts me. Rosalyn Carter was siting on the front porch with Jimmy the day after he left the President's office.
"I need to replace some of those bricks below the front steps," he told her.
"When Jimmy said that," the former first lady told a reporter, "all I could think was that the day before we had been dealing with the Iran Hostage Crisis. Our life horizon had suddenly shrunk from leading the free world to worrying about bricks."
Astride any large stage in our lives, our attention is focused on what seem to be big issues. When our stage shrinks, we keep doing the same thing. A crack in the front steps sucks our attention as if it were something earthshaking.
Sometimes, the stage changes size twice in the same day. The nurse manager of a giant ER who has spent all night multiple victims of a mass shooting may chuckle to herself when she comes home to see her teenager fussing about a cut finger.
It is difficult and important to sustain perspective. Indeed, that skill has a direct impact on our ability to practice once of life's most essential skills: gratitude.
-Erie Chapman
