Wing & a Prayer Productions

It’s always important to keep things in perspective.

This week I heard a BBC interview with a lady who had to cancel her honeymoon to Mexico due to the swine flu outbreak there.

Now I appreciate that having to cancel one’s honeymoon plans at short notice is annoying. In anyone’s book, this would be a pain in the backside, especially as the lead up to a wedding is usually fraught enough.  However, this was not a cancellation because the hotel had messed up her booking or baggage handlers were on strike. This was a cancellation because there is a virus out there which has already killed almost two hundred people in Mexico.

The woman shared how she was ‘devastated’ and that ‘she could never get that time back.’ Again, yes, this isn’t pleasant. But, at the end of the day, there are several nice places in the UK where you could book a place to spend a honeymoon at short notice which would be more than covered by the insurance money (And to be honest, how much time do you really spend sight seeing on your honeymoon?)

But the people who are really ‘devastated’ are those who have lost loved ones to swine flu. Time with them is time they truly will never get back.

I waited through the interview for some acknowledgement of that-a ‘Yes, this is really disappointing but nothing compared to what people in Mexico are suffering.’ But no. To be charitable, maybe she did say something like that and it was edited out but it didn’t sound like it was going that way.

Why is it that, in one of the most privileged nations on earth, we seem to be so unaware of what we have?