Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be someone else? Have you imagined yourself in another age? Maybe you choose to be a sandaled disciple, or you could be Attila the Hun's mother and scold him for not playing nice. Perhaps you decide to change history and be the Union soldier stationed at the Ford's Theatre presidential box and remain at your post, thereby thwarting John Wilkes Booth from acting out his final scene. America would definitely be a different United States. Others may want to be the Secret Service agent who decides at the last minute to reroute the Kennedy motorcade away from the Texas School Book Repository.

But you don't have to go back in history to experience a different life. Instead of traveling in time, journey in space somewhere 6,000 miles that way. You are a mother carrying a child on your back escaping the fighting in the Congo, or wearing a burqa in the Kingdom of Saud. You are trying to buy food to feed your family with worthless Zimbabwean dollars, or you are an Inuit native licking your lips of seal fat. Would you be in the streets of Tehran, or would you be a staunch defender fighting for the principles of your faith?

If that is too far away, try being someone living today in your town or a big city nearby. Be the person living on top of the mountain, or better yet, try imagining being at the bottom of the barrow. Instead of a roof over your head, you have a viaduct. You eat out every night, because the Salvation Army is where the sandwiches are served. Your wardrobe choices are easy when there is only one shirt.

Now that you are an expert at imagination, think of someone who is chronically ill if you have been healthy all your life, or consider the old if you are young, the disabled if you are fit and the mentally challenged if you are smart. Be for a night someone without health insurance who is having chest pain. How does it feel? Is your view different from a wheelchair when you can't get in the door? Of course, if you are old and ill, project back to the days when you were young and free.

Being someone else for just a moment provides an armful of gifts. Seeing but better feeling what the rest of the world has to deal with on a daily basis blossoms blessings of gratitude. When I see mothers who can't nurse for whatever reason, I tell them to be grateful for clean water. Their sisters in many countries have to walk miles to just be able to scoop up dirty brown slime from the same pond where the animals defecate.