I agree with Claude

quote below is a bit vulgar...

I am treating myself to some short story reading before sleep most evenings, so I have been reading through The Best American Short Stories 2003 and found myself hoping to get to the end of Edwidge Danticat's Night Talker before sleep arrived and then the book would flop out of my hands, thus waking me up.

A side character named Claude returned for the final scene, and when someone expressed the words "I am sorry" to him because of having lived through a terrible event, he responded with these words ...

"Even with everything I have done, with everything that has happened to me, I am the luckiest fucker on the goddamned planet. Someone, somewhere, must be looking out for my ass."

I feel this way. I am blessed. Maybe all who have hit rock bottom feel this way. We know it can happen again and everyday we experience outside of that hell makes us grateful like Claude.

Anyway, as I go into my past, you may feel sorrow at times, maybe not, but remember this, I am one lucky bastard to have a life, that in the midst of it all contains my four favorite words: peace, hope, joy, and love.