# Chapter 268

“I agree with you” she declared to me at the breakfast table. What is there to agree on? I was just stating the definition of a word. But my lovely wife thinks we are in a debate in some fashion so she is “agreeing” with me and “disagreeing” with me and all this business is so funny. Brenda sees life as a puzzle. I see life as a portrait. For Brenda it is fragmented and unassembled and unfinished. For me, it just is. Experience it however you want, including as a puzzle, but mysteries are mysteries and life is life, live it embrace it hate it or waste it, but it just is.

How we view these matters often impacts how we experience these matters. For Americans the one overriding experience is comparison. The dear dear American almost always feels bereft of some possession or some respect or some option or some something, because they/we have the terrible Fear Of Missing Out on something important that someone else has, or has done, or will do. We are constantly astonished at how overwhelmingly many Americans feel poor, when we see all Americans as overwhelmingly wealthy. So rather than enjoying what they have, the American feels poor and underprivileged and left out, while consuming far more of the world’s resources than any other nationality.

Brenda sees a puzzle I see a portrait, what do you see?