Me, Me, Me, and You

It is 3 o'clock in the morning, October 31st, Halloween. One year ago we were having a power outage that lasted for close to 3 days, a blizzard came through and knocked down the trees that were still carrying all their leaves and couldn't handle the weight of all the snow on top of it.

Well, today also marks day 3 of the current power outage, thanks to hurricane Sandy, and no relieve is in sight, promised is that will have power back by next Monday, that's in 5 days! But what does this all have to do with this entry's title? Well, a lot, actually! Since quite a while I was planning to write about the selfishness of the people I come across every day, on the bus, the subway, and life in general.

Although I was fully aware that I am one of the Me-First people, I sure hoped to be one of the Me-Only-Once-In-A-While-First and actually had a hard time finding a fitting example of my own selfishness. But that changed in the last few days, now that I am sitting here, in the cold, in the middle of the night, worried and mad at the same time.

"If only the power came back on, things would be much better" I am thinking, and "why does it take so long to get the crews to fix the lines." And of course thoughts like "what the f#%* are they doing?" are not far behind. But Reasonable-Me recognizes that I got off easy, I didn't get hurt, property damage is minimal, and I have some ability to get to a store that may have some goods that make my life even more convenient. My main concern is that I cannot get to work for the rest of the week, while other people lost all they owned, some even their own lives.

So, what originally was planned to be an entry about the egomaniacs out there, of which we seem to have more and more, it really turned into an entry about me. How ironic, or how selfish, or both!

Ingo