How Red Sneakers Changed My Life

Humans are one clever species. Having spent about two million years on planet earth, I guess we've managed to pick up a thing or two on living. Like how to justify everything life throws our way. If things are going the way we want them to, then we tell ourselves we deserve it, no doubt about it. And if something bad happens, we find a thousand and one reasons to assure ourselves that it was ultimately for the best, or to use Dumbledore's words, that it must have been for 'the greater good'. But the question is, was it really? Are we ever really in a position to judge what could have been better or worse for us when we don't even know what never happened?  The other day, my cousin was talking to me about parallel universes, about how each of us has got a double living in some alternate dimension who does the exact opposite of what we do in the real world. So if I go left when I'm walking down a street, my double goes right in his world. Okay, so as cool as th...

So, they tell me there are worse things in life. And somewhere deep inside, I know they're right. Hell, in this century, with countries vying with each other over nuclear warfare, and suicide bombers blowing craters a meter wide in residential streets, merely existing is an achievement. People get divorced, get cheated on, lose their kids to gang violence, have their houses robbed (sometimes five times over), get jailed for crimes they didn't commit. How many families have lost loved ones in airplane crashes? Yes, there's always somebody out there who has it worse than you. But does that mean that if a person doesn't fall in one of the above-mentioned categories, his or her problems aren't important enough? Their suffering doesn't matter because they haven't been hurt enough, is that it? I don't think so. Every time someone hurts, no matter how small, it matters. We're all human, and we're all equal, and when one of us hurts, it is a t...