There's a man outside my window.

It's 38 degrees, the wind is blowing horizontally, pushing small grainy bits of snow across the parking lot below, and there's a man hanging from a couple of ropes outside my window with a bucket and a squeegee. So, yeah, I'm feeling lucky -- lucky that I'm on this side of the window.

Lucky that I don't have to use a squeegee professionally.

Lucky that, generally speaking, my work is the same no matter what the weather.

Even as I write this, I'm feeling a little uncomfortable making that kind of observation. I know nothing about this man on the other side of the insulated glass. He's a lot younger than I am -- I can see that -- and he seems totally unmoved by what I perceive as the precariousness of his position. His movements are methodical, almost relaxed. His face shows no sign of stress or anxiety. He's working, just as I am, crabwalking his way up and down the shiny face of the building, just as I crabwalk my way through the panes of my Outlook calendar every day.

Of course, when he's done, he can see easily what he's accomplished. It's clean, after all. Streak free and all that. And when I'm done?

Well, let's just say it's not as simple as all that. In fact, some days I scurry through my calendar at full speed and leave the office unclear about what exactly I got accomplished. My friend outside the window here doesn't have that problem, I'm sure. He comes, he sees, he squeegees.

Look -- I'm no fool. I don't have any romantic notions about the idyllic life of the working classes. I grew up as the son and grandson of the working classes. I understand the toll such a life takes, physically and mentally. I understand that, for my friend outside the window, the day is long and tiring. I understand that he's likely to have people who depend on him, who are banking on his continued willingness and ability to sit suspended three floors above the concrete sidewalk so that he can earn enough to pay the bills. And I understand that it's likely to be a long. long way into the evening before he's able to shake the chill from deep within his bones.

But still, I'm imagining him wiping the last window clean and easing himself down to the solid pavement at the end of the day and looking up at where he's been -- admiring the way the sun glitters off the shining surfaces, and the cold, bright blue sky of October reflects in pieces all across the glassy front of the building -- and thinking "There. Done."

That's lucky.

Lucky? Who me?

You might think, given the title of this blog, that you're likely to find these lines filled with tales of good fortune -- winning lottery tickets, parking places just where they're needed, unforeseen windfalls of not very hard-earned dollars.

Would that that were so.

The truth is that my life is much like many others -- too much stress, too little sleep; too much anxiety, not enough certainty; too much sadness, not enough joy. In fact, the very idea of chronicling these thoughts came on the heels of a season of nearly unbearable grief, a season that thankfully has finally begun to recede a bit into a past that remains unforgettable, yet less painfully remembered.

So what makes me so lucky? What gives me the audacity to call myself the luckiest man?

There's my wife, of course. A godsend to me, and an absolute rock-solid blessing to the other things that make me lucky -- my children. You're sure to hear more about them later.

But these are so obvious as to seem like platitudes, and like all platitudes, they are easily stated, and less easily felt. It's the other that I hope to discover in these posts, the things that should convince me -- should convince us all -- that no matter what we feel about our lives at any given moment, we are, in fact, the luckiest men and women on the face of the earth.

Such insight isn't easily gained, and I fear that I've nearly lost my capacity to see them at all. So, in the end, maybe this is an exercise for me, an attempt to rediscover the luck that's already there, that surrounds me each day in ways I've just grown to jaded to see.

Maybe you'll see it, too. Maybe you'll see it before I do. If that's the case, I hope you'll be kind enough to point it out to me. I can use all the help I can get.