Mosquitoes or Sunsets?

THE MAY issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC had an adventure of a young woman with a Ph.D. in English literature, Kira Salak, who decided to kayak three hundred of the 1200 mile Irrawaddy River in the country that used to be called Burma. She’d read romantic accounts of the part of the world that Rudyard Kipling and W. Somerset Maugham had both loved and wanted to experience it for herself.

THE GOVERNMENT OF TODAY is a military junta that has renamed the country Myanmar and ripped from it most of the romance the young adventuress had hoped for. Poverty, disease, filth, and political unrest rub shoulders with hardship and near starvation. The perils and disillusionment of the trip notwithstanding, the young woman was able to find a redemptive beauty in the sunset’s reflection on the river she’d set out to explore.

MANY WOULD SAY THIS APPROACH is unrealistic—that this young woman in her kayak should be outraged, disgusted, and discouraged rather than nostalgic and romantic.

BUT I DISAGREE. Even in adversity and disappointment there are pleasures to be counted. Life is not one-dimensional. Wonders survive in the midst of horror, and dreadful circumstances cannot wither the delights of friendship. There is much joy tucked in the corners of life, but it doesn’t always find me first.

MY WELL-BEING IS DEPENDENT on searching for it. I must sort through the grim for the things that give me hope. If I don’t, all is lost; there’s no reason to go on. Like Dr. Salak, I must look for the beautiful sunsets and ignore the mosquitoes.

IT’S A MATTER OF CHOICE—but, isn’t everything?

You’re blessed. Be a blessing!