I was reading a story today in New Yorker magazine about how terrible conditions are in North Korea. Even the upper class has a difficult time getting enough rice to eat. They look at their neighbors to the north, China, as the land of plenty. Mexico, our neighbors to the immediate South come to our country because of the deplorable conditions in their country. Something interesting, though is that their neighbors to the South, Guatemala, look to Mexico as a land of opportunity. Mexico has problems with illegal immigrants from Guatemala similar to what the United States experiences with immigrants from Mexico.

This interests me because the news media today is beating the drums about how bad things are in our country. Unemployment stays at near 10%. We have two wars going on. We have an ecological disaster in the Gulf, and we're trying to fix our health care system. The bad news permeates our lives. Yet, in spite of how terrible things are here, people from other countries are risking their lives to get here. So are things really bad? Or is our perspective bad? I believe it is the latter.

It is true that our economy is worse than it's been in many years. And it is a fact that many people are out of work. We can take the perspective of dwelling on these negatives. We can be depressed because we're losing our house or can't pay our mortgage. We might be driving a five year old car. Or maybe we can't afford to replenish our wardrobe. We can focus on these things or we can take a more global view.

For me the global view is that I am simply grateful to be alive. While I have the capability of looking at all the negatives in our world, I choose to look at the positives. Because I want to feel good I look at the positives. Even though the media makes a living spreading muck, I choose to not accept it. And as a person who has escaped from the gloom and depression of addiction I don't have to today.

Instead, I choose to believe that I live in the greatest country in the world. Twenty years ago I was homeless, broke, and in the middle of my addictions. Today I have a great job, a degree of prosperity and am enjoying the promises that we hear of in the recovery rooms.

While it might seem simplistic to view the world this way, I believe that it is healthy to take charge of our lives. We can choose to look at the negative and use that as an excuse to not perform as well as we could. Or we can look at our land and our economy through the eyes of those who risk their lives to get here.

Arizona's Sonoran Desert is dotted with the unmarked graves of those who weren't fortunate enough to participate in what many of us complain about today.