When the Skies are Blue and You See only Grey

 When the bright blue skies can only be seen through a fog of grey, how can you paint the world to be other when yours itself is so dark? Everyone needs to be inspired.  Everyone needs someone to walk beside them and say things like "atta boy" or "aw, that sucks" and "how can I help".  Sometimes - even - for a moment - you can be brought out from a very dark place when listening to a story of someone else's good news.  In a good world, in a just world, we have people around us who understand us in some profound way and who will hold us up when it seems that we cannot yet even see the bottom. But we know the truth.  We know that for millions of people throughout the world there is seldom if ever a sympathetic ear lo listen, and rarer still someone who might have a paint brush in a brighter shade than our own.We know this because we see them, the walking wounded among us, and if they're really lucky we might even notice them.  But for the most part they remain anonymous, unknown to anyone, uncared for by the multitudes. Is this just something that we, the privileged who DO have people who care, people who will pull us back from the abyss, tell  ourselves as a way of saying, suck it up,  it could be worse?  I hate that.  It takes me back to the days of "eat everything on your plate, there are people starving in China."  Just because someone else has it worse, and there is always someone who has it worse, doeesn't mean that I shouldn't be able to wallow in my darkened world for at least a while longer. But I can only do that because I know that one day soon the sun will rise and I will notice that the skies are blue and are no longer painted grey...