No, not the email client. Perspective. Hope vs. pragmatism vs. paranoia. Very similar to "you can live each day as if nothing was a miracle, or you can live each day as if everything was a miracle." Only difference is, this is not the balance on the scale of wonder, but the expectation of humanity's innate distribution on the spectrum of good and bad.

Maybe this quote is better:

Once is happenstance.
Twice is coincidence.
Third time is enemy action.

My mother is aging. She's at the point where I'm not sure she shares our reality. As such, I'm not comfortable with her living by herself, in an apartment for independent elderly, her home. Currently, for medical reasons, she's in a rehabilitation center. Basically, a nursing home with an emphasis on therapy and recovery.

She's also poor. She qualifies for MediCare. I'm not sure who pays for her current hospitalization, but she doesn't. (I'll leave the pundiocy about socialized medicine vs. welfare sponges for other people, this is about my mother, so it's no longer abstract, and thus, no longer objective.)

The social worker at the rehabilitation center recommended a residential center over a nursing home. A nursing home is basically like the rehab center, a hospital-like environment with specialists and nurses. A residential center is assisted living, more of an apartment-like setting. It's also an order of magnitude smaller in scale, so there is more personalized care and interaction.

However, most residential centers don't take MediCare. So, I'd have to pay the balance, and it would come out to at least $1,500 a month. Still the social worker recommended a residential center for socialization value.

SpouseKitty thought this didn't sound right. We didn't know that residential centers didn't take MediCare, so she thought the social worker was running a scam. Even after that was clarified by the social worker at her apartment complex, SpouseKitty still thought there was a kickback or some other fiscal advantage for the rehab hospital's social worker to recommend the residential center.

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That's the crux of it. We have no way of peering into the social worker's heart. We can't interrogate her. Were I clever, I could possibly engage her in conversation and draw it out of her, but I'd still doubt if it was the truth, or my interpretation of same.

SpouseKitty, as said above, believe the worst. At first, the social worker was, in her eyes, breaking the law. Now, there has to be some sort of commission or other incentive for her to refer patients to residential care facilites.

Me, I think there's at least a one-third chance she's recommending it purely for objective reasons. My mother speaks no English, has a very limited palate. She is used to Chinese expatriate culture. Nursing homes in the SFBA out of necessity have Chinese speaking staff, but the culture will be likely ... well, as sterile as most hospitals.

After all this rambling, that's the point of this blog entry. SpouseKitty sees this situation and figures someone's got to have an angle. Me, I see this situation and figure there's a chance everyone's trying to do the Right Thing, even if the end decision isn't one I agree with.

I can live like SpouseKitty does, aware of the danger behind every bush, alert to the potential harm from every shadow and stranger. Or, I can view the foliage as its own creation, shadows as the interplay of light and substance, and people as either friends or friends-to-be.

Outlook. I choose to see the good in everyone whenever possible.