what do you have to be grateful for?

I saw this on the Pacifica Riptide blog today.

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If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who will not survive the week.

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 500 million people around the world.

If you attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death, you are more blessed than almost 3 billion people in the world.

If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head, and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of the people in the world.

If you have money in the bank, cash in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.

If your parents are still married and alive, you are very rare,even in the United States. If you hold up your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful, you are blessed because the majority can, but most do not.

If you can read this message, you are more blessed than 2 billion people in the world who cannot read anything at all.

Lately I've been traveling between my home in Pacifica (pop. 40,401) and McCloud (pop. 1,343). It's really a larger contrast than just 40:1 since Pacifica is really just part of the concrete known as the San Francisco Bay Area, home to 7.2 million people.

Here in McCloud, there's one bank, one post office and one market. There are 8 students in the high school. It's 10 miles from the next town. People wave to me as I drive down the 2 blocks of Main Street. People I've never seen before. It's weird. But cool.

It causes me to reflect on the life I have in Pacifica and how complicated and disconnected it is. I grew up in the Bay Area. That contributes to the illusion that life in the Bay Area can be "normal". But the deceit creeps up over time until one reads that San Mateo County (where Pacifica is) is the 4th most expensive housing market in the United States. And that's only because we fell from 2nd place.

Hanging out in McCloud, one hears...nothing. Virtually nothing. At 5:10 pm, the dinner train departs to take passengers on a tour of the McCloud railroad while they have dinner. It toots back in about 8 pm. Other than that, you have to be here on July 4th to hear anything else. I once heard a siren. Once.

It's a slower world here. I read somewhere that Fed Ex Overnight means "give it a few days" in McCloud. There's no home delivery of mail here. Everyone has to have a PO box. But I did have success this week when I ordered something from Amazon.com and it was delivered via UPS. I felt a sense of victory that I had somehow bent the two ends of my world together.

Tomorrow I head back home. Yesterday I was self-conscious of my bluetooth headset as I walked through the McCloud market. After I return home, I'll look odd if I don't have it on. Which is "normal"? I used to think the Bay Area is living in the "now" and McCloud is left over from "then". I'm starting to think of McCloud as "real" and the Bay Area...isn't.