Is My Life Real Bad?

　　Have you ever, at any one time, had the feeling that life is bad, real bad, and you wish you were in another situation?

　　You find life make things difficult for you, work sucks, life sucks, everything seems to go wrong...

　　Read the following story... it may change your views about life:

　　After a conversation with one of my friends, he told me despite taking 2 jobs, he brings back barely above 1000 dollar per month, he is happy as he is.

　　He explained that it was through one incident that he saw in India......... that happened a few years ago when he was really feeling low and touring India after a major setback.

　　He said that right in front of his very eyes he saw an Indian mother chop off her child's right hand with a chopper. The helplessness in the mother's eyes, the scream of pain from the innocent 4-year-old child haunted him until today.

　　You may ask why did the mother do so; had the child been naughty, had the child's hand been infected?? No, it was done for two simple words- -

　　- TO BEG!

　　The desperate mother deliberately caused the child to be handicapped so that the child could go out to the streets to beg. Taken aback by the scene, he dropped a piece of bread he was eating half-way. And almost instantly, a flock of 5 or 6 children swamped towards this small piece of bread which was covered with sand, robbing bits from one another.

　　The natural reaction of hunger.

　　He began to tell himself how fortunate he is. How fortunate he is to be able to have a complete body, have a job, have a family, have the chance to complain what food is nice and what isn't nice, have the chance to be clothed, have the many things that these people in front of him are deprived of...

　　Now I begin to think and feel it, too! Was my life really that bad?

　　Perhaps... no, I should not feel bad at all... What about you?

　　Maybe the next time you think you are, think about the child who lost one hand to beg on the streets.

　　"Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want, it is the realization of how much you already have."