Thinking Out Loud, Volume CCCLXXII

I looked down and to my right, and there it was, nestled in among some trees, between two big mountains, barely visible from the road. It was not what you would call a pretty house...in fact, it was an old, "worn-out" looking mobile home. But to someone, it was home. I guess it would be accurate to say that since it was between the mountains, it was in a valley. My GPS system in my car shows elevation, and about the time I noticed that modest abode down deep in that valley, I also made a mental note of my elevation...1,721 feet above sea level. The road I was on curved around to the right as I made my descent down the side of the mountain, and in a few minutes I passed directly in front of that home, so I checked my elevation again...1,296 feet. "Yes," I thought, "that's definitely a valley." Then my thoughts went back to my own home. I live about a half mile from the Ouachita River, and the street that runs parallel with the river is at 84 feet above sea level, and from that point up to where I live there is a steady, gradual incline until it gets to my house, which is at 96 feet above sea level. But I don't live in a valley. The home I saw in the valley is at an elevation that is exactly 1500 feet higher than mine, and I'm not in a valley. How can that be? As far back as I can remember, I've heard it said that life is a series of mountain-tops and valleys, but now I'd like to go back give that old cliche' a little more thought. Can the word "valley" be a relative term? If our mountains and valleys are anything like the comparison between the old mobile home I saw among the mountains of Northwest Arkansas and my house, I think maybe it is. Maybe we consider ourselves to be in a valley simply because we're comparing our situations with what we perceive those of the people surrounding us to be. Sometimes I think life has given me a bag of lemons when, in reality, there are multiplied millions of other people on this earth who would give anything to be in my situation. I've never actually sat down and watched an episode of "Survivor," but if I understand it correctly, they take a group of Americans and put them on a remote island somewhere to see if they can make it there. How do they do it? We worry about how they will be able to survive on an island where natives have been living happily for generations. Such drama! I understand that it's natural for us to constantly strive to make our lives better and raise our standard of living. I do the same thing. But why is it that we have a tendency to only compare ourselves with those who appear to have better lives than we do? That can become depressing. Why do we compare ourselves with anyone else? (Check out 2 Corinthians, Chapter 10, to see what the Bible says about people who do that. It's not very flattering.) I believe the majority of the problems we have with our valley experiences are primarily in that little space between our ears. They will become much more easy to deal with when we figure out that to someone else, our valleys may look like mountain tops. Preston