There's someone watching ...

You know what the best thing is in the world? It's living each day knowing that there is someone watching over you... and I am not talking human beings here.

It is easy for us to always say: this is the worst thing that can happen to me, or even shout: why... why is it that bad things always happen to good people?

But the one thing we fail to realise is that things can always get worse, which is where I believe the whole watching-over part comes in.

Take a simple example. My car broke down the other day at the petrol station and apparently now I need to change its batteries. Anyway, I got so angry. How on earth was I going to go to my assignments all over Dubai and Sharjah with no car?

Of course, I thought of cabs, but still. And of all weeks the batteries chose to give up on me this week... the busiest in my life... well, not really in my life, but you know what I mean.

However, I realised that things could have been worse. I might not have been in a petrol station when this happened, I might have been stranded somewhere on Emirates Road instead.

I got help from two men, may God bless them, who simply offered their assistance without asking. I was able to buy the recharging cables from the petrol station and I withdrew money from the ATM machine there because I knew I would need to use cabs for the rest of the week until the car is fixed.

You see, the battery dying on me is something I ought to have expected. I have been using the car for over a year now, and I should have checked the batteries earlier. But how this happened and where it happened was all God's way of making things easier for me.

All in all, things were not really that bad.

What I am trying to say is when things go wrong, always think that they can get worse. Things are meant to happen. It is how you react to them that counts.

The other day we were discussing something in the office and Anupa, my editor, was telling us how a Nato commander simply apologised for mistakenly killing dozens of Afghani civilians in a raid on Taliban fighters.

She said if that was a mistake he simply apologised for, then the mistakes we make in our daily lives, in our work, are simple and are never terrible - of course I am paraphrasing here!

In other words, no matter how big a mistake you make or how bad things go with you, I think it is always good to look at the bright side. Think positive. As hard as that can be, I think the best thing to say is Alhamdullilah.

Reema Saffarini
Notes Reporter
education@gulfnews.com