Perspective.

It’s something we all lose sight of as we become engrossed in our own lives.

The daily stresses become larger the more you worry about them – until you almost become obsessed with the minutia.

Every now and then a story comes along which helps restore a little perspective into your life, reminding you to be far more grateful for your lot.

Watching Sixty Minutes on Sunday night, I had that perspective restored.

Featured on the program was Nick Vujicic, a 25-year-old Australian who heads up an inspirational ministry called Life Without Limbs.

Nick was born without arms or legs and given no medical reason for this condition.

Faced with countless challenges and obstacles, he says God has given him the strength to surmount what others might call impossible.

Rather than wallow in his own disabilities, Nick is proving an inspiration around the world, teaching children at schools to make the most of their life, while inspiring more than two million people in church and business meetings that despite the odds, everyone can be an overcomer.

Nick plays golf, swims, drives a car but more importantly he has passion to share his refreshing sense of hope and optimism with all the world.

He’s travelled to more than 19 nations, and continues to be humbled by the reaction he creates wherever he speaks.

While it would be easy for him to be bitter about the way he was born, he has a life that many able-bodied people would envy.

As he says “God has used me to let people know in countless schools, churches, prisons, orphanages, hospitals, stadiums and in face-to-face encounters with individuals how very precious they are to God.

“Secondly, it’s my pleasure to assure them that God does have a plan for their lives that is purposeful.

“For God took my life, one that others might disregard as having any significance and filled me with His purpose and showed me His plans to move hearts and lives toward Him. Understanding this, though faced with struggles, you can overcome too."

It’s so easy for us, as Australians, to lose sight of the big picture. We are still the lucky country.

While many families face increasing hardship because of rising mortgage payments, fuel and grocery prices, in world terms, we are excessively wealthy.

A story the Daily ran on Saturday from Godfrey Karoro in Zimbabwe served to highlight this – and again remind us all of the value of perspective.

It told of how locals are forced each day to rise at 1am to use the power and water made available only then.

It’s the time when women have to rise to iron clothes, cook whatever for supper and prepare porridge for the morning before the water and power is cut off at 6am.

Despite the woeful service, workers pay about one billion Zimbabwe dollars from a monthly wage of about 25 billion.

With inflation running at a staggering 2.2 million per cent, salary increases are simply chasing rising prices.

Locals are now doing without ‘luxuries’ such as toothpaste, soap, toilet paper and eggs, meat and bread.

Back home, we contemplate whether to buy the 106cm LCD TV to watch the Olympics or the 42-inch plasma.

Sure, life is tough at times, but it’s a lot tougher for many others than us.

It’s all a matter of perspective.

Great water swindle
It seems the state government’s great water swindle could cost us even more than we first feared.

Last week, the council’s finance director Greg Laverty revealed water now showing a cost of 90 cents a kilolitre on rate notices would be $9 a kilolitre in 10 years’ time.

This, of course, to help fund the multi-billion-dollar water grid to help supply precious liquid to thousands more residents expected to flood into south-east Queensland over the next decade or so.

While the Coast doesn’t have a water problem, we seem to be paying for everyone else’s.

You have to wonder how much the State Government really expects us to swallow.

First it was the Traveston Dam, and then a pipeline to take our water to Brisbane, and now the State Government has earmarked Bribie, Kawana and Marcoola for further investigation for a desalination plant.

And just when you thought it couldn’t be more laughable, deputy premier Paul Lucas suggests the Marcoola one could share the same site as our runway – after all, the plant will only be as large as a ‘big shed’.

I don’t know what sort of acreage Paul Lucas lives on, but the one on the Gold Coast certainly wouldn’t fit in my backyard.

I can’t wait for the next instalment in the great water swindle saga.