Everyone has a morning routine, whether that be getting up early, going to the gym, taking a shower, eating your Wheaties, and going to class or getting up five minutes before class and sprinting across campus. Regardless, we all hate it when that routine is interrupted.

Boy, was my schedule interrupted today! To begin, I neglected to get out of my wonderfully comfortable dorm-issued bed. The alarm kept going off, and I kept snoozing away. When I finally got up, there wasn’t any hot water for my shower. My phone didn’t charge all the way. I haven’t done laundry in a while so I’m about out of clean clothes. After I frantically dug through all of my drawers and put something on, I dashed off to the caf for a quick breakfast.

All I really like from the caf’s breakfast selection is the sausage and biscuits; apparently so does the rest of campus. I was desperately scraping the bottom of the pan for the last bit of gravy. People are watching me cling desperately to my hope of biscuits and gravy. Embarrassed, I got enough gravy from the pan to cover a biscuit. Almost defeated, I take my meager bowl to an empty table. There is always gravy. As I am feeling sorry for myself, I realize just how pathetic I am. There is enough gravy for a biscuit, and if there wasn’t, I could eat something else. It isn’t as if I didn’t get anything to eat. I was able to salvage enough for a breakfast, and here I was feeling sorry for myself because I didn’t get first pickings. I was mad because I had to take a warm shower. It wasn’t even cold, and I was convinced that the day had gotten off to a horrible start.

At least I had a slightly burned biscuit and a scoop of gravy, right? It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t biscuits and gravy from home, but I wouldn’t have eaten otherwise. Today, I am going to be thankful for that hard biscuit. As for the shower, I’m still a bit peeved, but I am getting over it. The early bird gets the hot water. Next time, I will be prepared. But I’m thankful for the warm, running water I did have.

Every day is chance to learn a lesson. Routines will be interrupted. It’s a fact of life, we will over snoozing the alarm, forgetting to do laundry, running out of hot water, scraping the bottom of the gravy pot and our lives will somehow go on. What matters is that you woke up, you have clothes that need washed, you have clean water and that there was a little residual gravy at the bottom, just enough for a slightly burned biscuit. It’s all about perspective. Someone else has got it worse.