Wrestling with feeling 'helpless'

I utterly hate feeling helpless!

I'm sure you do too. To rely on others for basic stuff....Oh, at this point, still getting around and all, I could still do a lot that Bern doesn't want me to do. I couldn't walk the dog, but I could cook dinner--I can move around the kitchen without my cane. I could clean dishes and load the dishwasher. I could feed the dog---but Bern's already taken over all that.

And it will be worse after my knee surgery. My mobility is going to be more limited, I know. I already and dreading crutches. I don't know the  last time, if ever, I walked on crutches. I can get up and down the steps--one at a time--but on crutches? I'm just not scared.

But then I pinch myself and remember 'helpless' is relative.

I'm sitting at my computer in no pain, in my house in Connecticut with my dog behind me and my wife washing my clothes. And she's been great about the injury.

I have an upstairs book and a downstairs book since I need both hands to do stairs and when I through a book down this morning, Bern came running, thinking I had fallen. So now I have something to read both places. I stay on one level as long as I can before going to the other level.

"Helpless...."

How hollow that sounds when I watch the news: the police shootings in Texas and North Carolina, the millions of refugees around the world...people in poverty, people in prison, people in nursing homes and in hospice care, people with disabled children.

I should wash my mouth out with soap for even voicing the word "helpless" to refer to myself.

That's the Theory of Helpless Relativity....