EVA BRADLEY - LEFT FIELD
There's nothing quite like focusing on someone else's misery to get perspective on how lucky you actually are.
Right now, safe in my post-1931 earthquake proof building in Napier, I'm no longer complaining about the lack of plugs or insulation. I'm just happy to have walls.
Further south in Canterbury, they may not have walls, but at least they have sky above them and earth underfoot - albeit a little bit shaky.
Thousands of miles away in Chile, 33 miners trapped 700 metres underground with no immediate sign of rescue would be stoked to be faced with Christchurch's problems right now.
No one appreciates being reminded that there are people out there with worse problems than their own, but perspective is a wonderful balm for discontent.
Recently on my drive home, I was wallowing in a fairly typical 21st century despair about what I would cook for dinner. A news item on the radio informed me that, at the same time, the Chilean miners were locked in a philosophical battle about the rightness of sending alcohol and cigarettes down the tiny chute along with the toilet paper and dehydrated peas.
Suddenly, the prospect of two-minute noodles paired with a cold beer didn't seem such a hardship after all.
As I learned about the various items being sent up and down the 6cm passage to the trapped miners (dirty jokes-up, rosary beads from the Pope, down ... and in that order) I began to wonder just how I would cope with the proposition of several months trapped in a rock fissure in the bowls of the earth, and what exactly I would most want posted down to me.
I could definitely relate to their most recent request for hard liquor and smokes.
Being denied simple guilty pleasures such as these when you are facing a long and very dark death would prompt my next (more urgent) request: the eyeballs of the pompous official who boycotted the contraband.
Letters from loved ones, soccer videos, antidepressants and even Ludo and Dominoes have been shuttled down the chute to boost the morale underground.
So what would cheer up a 30-something first-world woman?
A complete boxed-set of Sex and the City would be a jolly good start. Followed swiftly by a generous provision of pineapple lumps.
In a world where most of us are so busy multi-tasking and chasing our tails in a bid to get everything done by yesterday, the idea of being trapped underground with nothing to do but watch reruns on a small TV for several months solid has a rather macabre appeal.
Imagine the vacation message on the cell phone and email: "Hi, this is Eva. I'm buried alive until Christmas and will respond to your enquiry then. Have a great day."
Generally, I find I only ever want something when I can't have it.
Chocolate sitting in the pantry is never as desirable as when it's 15km away at the nearest supermarket on a cold winter's night when you definitely don't want to go out and get it.
I suspect the desires that would consume me when I was trapped almost a kilometre underground would surprise not just the Nasa psychologists sitting at the surface, but me as well.
And if and when I finally made it out?
After so many months of deprivation, it's hard to imagine how one would adjust to suddenly having everything one's heart desired. Though I suspect the eyeballs of the guy who denied me the medicinal grog would still be fairly high up the list.
Eva Bradley is an award-winning columnist.
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