A Happy Hokus with his hay.
As I was feeding Hokus the other morning I threw him his hay and forgot to close the door. Now since I forgot to close the door when I went to turn on the water, I fully expected him to be happily prancing out of the barn into the field full of grass. After all, in horse world green grass beats hay any day of the week. However, when I came back to fill up his water bucket and realized I had forgotten to close the door, I was startled to see him happily standing there munching on his (crappy) hay. For some reason seeing him munch so contently on his hay while green grass was just outside his door and he didn't even try for it brought to mind the old phrase "The grass is always greener."
A lot of times in the airline industry we spend a lot of time waiting for "the grass on the other side of the fence." Weather it is an upgrade, or a new job, or better pay, it seems like most of time it's always phrases like "Next year when I'm on second year pay." or "When I upgrade" or "When I get hired at a major." These are all great things to hope for no doubt, however, if you constantly spend your time wishing for something that may or may not happen (upgrade and hiring, god knows it seems like first year pay lasts for ever but it really doesn't) you are letting your life pass you by while you sit on hold.
While dh's carrer progression hasn't exactly been ideal, and his paycheck literally makes me cry every two weeks for someone who is 40 and has their masters, I realize how very LUCKY we actually are. Dh had 1-2? people in his new hire class last year that were in thier 50's and put to bed 3 airlines.3. Not quit for a better job, or where chasing an upgrade or pay, they changed jobs 3 times only to see each one go bankrupt/furlough to non-existence. When I think about these folks our situtaion looks like a rose garden. I personally also like these guys, they are generally much more down to earth than the "wonderkids" who maaged to get to a major and are 24 (no disrespect to them but I have found most of them have no idea how lucky they are, and they don't understand why everyone didn't just "do what they did").
My horses often teach me things but usually it's how many tranquillizer shots do I need to give Neeko to get him on the trailer, or creative ways to swear. However, in this case I was happily surprised by my boy Hokus's happiness at what was right in front of him :)
