Resilience > Life and Times: March 2, 2010.

This Monday I visited my beloved grandmother again at Mercy Hospital in Rockville Center.  To my surprise she was in unusually high spirits today, and I got nothing but smiles, laughs, jokes, and whispered trash talking on her fellow roommate.  Despite her condition she was extremely lively, and eager to talk and have some fun.  Her resilience after what she went through in Haiti: from losing her home, becoming unable to walk, etc… Is amazing to say the least.

I think if I lost something as simple as internet I’d feel as if life were close to meaningless (I’m exaggerating lol), but she manages to still crack a smile with the struggle of disability and old age adhering to her body.  Times like these are the ones that root you to the ground; Almost like a refresher of sorts; Bringing you back to ground zero, where you appreciate all you have, all your able to do, and all opportunities in front of you.

Prior to visiting my grandma I went to the barber shop as suggested by friends (thanks tiff).

While I was there I saw this picture cut from the daily news, framed, and set on a barbers desk.  I asked my barber on a price for the picture and he said I’d have to ask the owner but most likely he’d never sell it.  He went on to say that it stood as a symbol to all the barbers there that no matter how bad you think you have it just look at this picture and recognize things could be much worse.

This one man runs his whole operation from scraps of hair cutting tools assembled from the ruins and powers them using a car battery from a crushed car nearby.  Yet with his chair set up, robe covering the customer, chin up, working the mans beard, it’s as if the destruction and collapse of his dear country never even happened.