Where Is Our Focus?

"It is the giving over to smallness that opens us to misery.  So, when feeling miserable, we must look wider than what hurts." Mark Nepo

There is much written nowadays that suggests that physical illness comes only after we have been oriented to seeing what was wrong in our lives and complaining.  I'm not sure that is true, but a piece of it certainly is.  Our lives do bring in more of whatever we are focused upon.  We have all been with people who talk about their troubles as if medals won, and we have all been with people who focus on the joy and goodness in their lives - in spite of difficulties.  It is a choice.  We can be oriented one way or the other.  As caregivers, we are dealing with someone who has a terminal illness.  Is our orientation toward seeing the end-of-life process or seeing the person within the circumstances?