Putting Things in Perspective

A close friend of mine was recently visiting (I think this was late June, if that puts into perspective how insane my schedule has been of late) and I was playing some new music for him. He lives out on the west coast, so it's rare that we get a chance to catch up in person.

Since the last time we've sat down together, he's had surgery for Acoustic Neuroma, which is a potentially life-threatening (although non-cancerous) tumor on the acoustic nerve. His (also potentially life-threatening) surgery was successful; the tumor was removed, but he lost all of his hearing in his right ear.

While we were listening to the music, I asked him what he thought. As part of the conversation that followed, he said:

It's in mono. The whole world is in mono. But it's better than being dead.

Kind of puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

I'll try to keep this in mind while I wrestle with SSIS deployment stuff today. ;-)