What are you comparing to?

I caught myself excitedly discussing the ‘warm spell’ hitting Vegreville this week. I felt almost giddy with the prospect of less clothing layers, window scraping, and general chill.

Next to -43 celsius (feels like -52), +3 is downright balmy.

It struck me that our warm spell would be equivalent to the coldest day ever in many parts of the world, and it reminded me of the importance of ‘relativity’ (not the physics kind).

Whether it is money, fame, popularity, skill, intelligence, luck, and especially weather, the measure of ‘low’ or ‘high’ is always relative.

To my family stuck in Maui right now +3 is ‘freezing’.

To us who have recently been through -43, it is ‘hot’.

Find other places to change your perspective comparisons, and you will notice how darn lucky you really are.

• Now that’s a peak ethos.