Loss, Gratitude, and the Phone Company

Think about all the things we take for granted. Sometimes it takes a loss to help us appreciate what we have.

Tuesday morning I picked up my phone to make a call and the line was dead. No dial tone. Nothing. Nada. I tried every extension in the house. [There are three.] Same story.

I went searching for my cell phone, which I don't use very often. It was buried in my purse. I used it to call the phone company to report the problem.

I dialed the number provided for reporting technical problems. The phone was answered by an automated voice - female, pleasant, courteous, robotic. I tried to get through to a live person, but couldn't. This was partly due, I suspect, to the fact that Tuesday was a national holiday (Veterans Day) and there was probably only a skeleton staff of "live people" there. The auto-voice told me that service would be scheduled for Thursday, sometime between 8am and 6pm - at least 48 hours away! [Now, I have learned this trick, which I am passing on to you: When they provide a pause during which you are supposed so say a word like "yes" or "no" or a number, say "Agent". That should get you transfered to a Customer Service representative.]

When, after three tries, I finally reached a "live agent" on Wednesday morning, I put in a plea: Could you please come today rather than tomorrow? I have a business to run. I need to be available to my clients, as well as to family and friends.

No go. But I did get a morning appointment for today (Thursday). And at 10:15 this morning, I got a call from a repairman saying that the problem had been fixed. A wire in a cable a few blocks away had broken and was now repaired. [An auto-voice called me later in the day to report the same thing.]

I was immediately relieved and joyful and flooded with gratitude. It occurred to me then that there are so many things in life that we have and take for granted - phone service, electricity, computers, access to email and the internet, material goods, family, friends, lovers, spouses, pets, health, housing, food, democracy, military protection, social security, medicare, pensions, paid benefits, sunrises and full moons ... ah, I could go on and on here.

Sometimes it helps to lose something or someone we take for granted. We get to see how fortunate and blessed we are (or were) to have had them in our lives. Right now, I feeling very grateful for phone service - and for everything else on that list above!