Replaced in a second

I think I'm getting old.

One of my favorite magazines is Reader's Digest and one of my favorite TV shows is Sunday Morning (and Parenthood of course!). I was reading the Feb. issue of RD and this piece struck a chord with me. It's so true. People from different walks of life had written short essays finishing the thought, "All I Really Need to Know I Learned. . . " Here's a shortened version of the one I really liked -

----- on November 22, 1963. I'm a kid, right, and one of the things that happened in the ensuing days is that television as I knew it ceased. Every station, every hour of every day, was talking about the assassination. And there's only so much a kid can deal with that. But I was still watching because that's the nature of television: obsession. At one point, I see this really tall guy standing next to Jackie Kennedy. I turned to my father and said, "Dad, who's that?" And he said, "That's the president." And I said, "No, Dad. John F. Kennedy was the president." He said, "Yeah, and the moment he died, this man became president." And I just looked at him and said, "That fast?" And he snapped his fingers: "Like that."

And I realized that's how important the most important man in the world was. He could be replaced in an instant. It was a lesson I never forgot. In fact, I was talking to a friend the other day. He was telling me, "I'm leaving my job, but I gotta stay because I have to help them blah blah." And I said, "You don't have to do anything. You leave, and they'll take care of their own business; they don't need you. You may want to stay. You may want to help them. But never make the mistake of thinking that you're so important that the world can't live without you, because no one is that important, ever.
-- by Walter Mosley

At first, this thought can be kind of disturbing. But when I'm feeling really stressed, it is strangely comforting for me to step back and realize that the world isn't going to fall apart because I didn't get blah, blah, blah done.

This has been "Deep thoughts" from Sharla Stockwell :)