Some Lives Are Better Than Others

Real people live here year-round.

I follow a family on Facebook that lives on Mohegan Island, a paradise located 12 miles off the coast of Maine. I've been going there in summer since 1970. Once I stayed for two weeks, but usually it's only for a few days, maybe four. Then it's back to real life. But the family I follow online lives there year-round, along with 90 other hardy souls, and their Facebook posts fill me with those feelings we're never supposed to have: envy and jealousy. It's just that their lives are so much better than mine, and yours, and just about everyone who doesn't live on an island 12 miles from the mainland.

Today's post from Mohegan is a long one, since they write a Spring Letter each year instead of a Christmas letter. It's full of news about the children playing outside in the warm sun and the birds returning from their winter havens making nests for the new babies and early flowers popping up from the newly-softened soil and the sun smiling on the burgeoning wildflowers in the meadows dotting the island. It describes a life so filled with beauty and nature and so far removed from mine, it's almost too hard to read about.

I would never describe the details of my daily life for fear the reader would fall asleep before the third sentence. For example, after I finish washing my paintbrushes I am going to an acupuncture appointment because despite a recent MRI, Western medicine hasn't a clue about the pain in my knee I've had for six months. After that I will stop by my dentist's office to get some teeth whitener. And then .....

See what I mean?