Asked by a reporter how she felt about being in this stage of life at age 60 Meryl Streep said in Vanity Fair magazine that she was flipping “grateful to be alive.” Actually she used a word more adamant than “flipping” and more in the character of Jane, her randy character in “It’s Complicated” than her iron-faced nun in “Doubt.”

You could say that if you were the Marvelous Meryl you’d be grateful for what you have, too. Continued amazing career, nice family, no worries about the mortgage, great skin.

In the interview she goes on to explain, “I have so many friends who are sick or gone, and I’m here. Are you kidding? No complaints.”

I mentioned Meryl’s comments to a friend when we met for an end-of-year drink. For her 2009 was more memorably bad than good. She was beat up in a brutal sexual attack that occurred one morning when she was working alone in her office.

She said she fought and punched and bit her attacker because she knew how awful her grandson would feel if anything bad happened to her. She has a couple of scabs on her face but she still laughs like no one else and says that she’s determined to not let the assault get in the way of her freedom. She wears a whistle around her neck and has given them to some of her colleagues, but she continues to walk where she pleases, night and day. And on New Year’s Eve she would party like always, banging pots and pans in the street and drinking champagne.

Then we talked about our usual things, books and movies and mutual pals and I toasted her fierce spirit and convincing scream and we drank to being alive.

Over Christmas we got a unique holiday greeting from a designer friend whose teenage son had some scary surgery at the end of the year to correct scoliosis. The card shows two different X-ray images and is as startling as Frida Kahlo’s painting of her torso sliced in half. The first picture is the young man’s spine yanked to the left and pushed to the right. To further the image there’s a photo of a tangled spaghetti pile of Christmas tree lights. Also pictured is the good news X-ray of a spine notched with pins and staples, but straight. Next to it is a photo of a simple single string of holiday lights. The card’s message reads: “Gratitude, 2009.”

There are probably endless reasons to be flipping grateful even in our world of wars and lost jobs and foreclosed houses and uncertain health insurance and dread of the next guy getting on a plane who knows how to work his bomb. You could spend all your time thinking only about the bad stuff. But I believe in taking inspiration from wherever it comes and the other night on Masterpiece Theatre a dying woman told her young friend that worry is a waste of time.

For more reassurance I suggest a trip to a planetarium like the amazing exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences. Sit in the dark and fly through space and you might take comfort that the sky really isn’t falling, although it does seem to burn up a lot with all those dying stars and new ones coming along. By comparison human beings are very tiny and somewhat insignificant. But we’re still here and for that we can be grateful.

Susan Swartz is an author and journalist in Sebastopol, Ca. You can also read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is susan@juicytomatoes.com