Don’t get taken
away by the title thinking I am some spoilt brat who is telling people to just
shut up and be grateful for what you have and quit whining about your problems.
I know whining is not the best choice of word here, but as it is letting me get
my point across, I will let it be.
This is one blog
entry that I am mainly posting for myself, rather than my readers. Sorry
readers, next post will be for you guys. Life is very difficult and I may be
only 24 years old, yet I have seen quite a bit of stuff first hand. And I know
that no matter how much we want to say those clichéd overused dialogues like,
“Always look at the glass half full” or “Always look at the bright side” or
“Every single cloud has a silver lining and a person should look for that”, it
is not always possible. It is good in theory and always worth a try,
unfortunately it is not always possible, even for the world’s most optimistic
and bravest person.
Yet I thought to
myself that I should compile a list of the ten things that I am grateful to
have, because sometimes it is the little things in life that count and it is in
the smallest things where happiness can be found. To quote Harry Potter
character Albus Dumbledore, “Happiness can be found in the darkest of times,
only if one remembers to turn on the light”.
And on top of
this, there will always be nay sayers, namely, society. Society and the world
will always tell you how nothing you ever have or do is ever good enough. A
person with a bicycle is told to get a motorcycle, a person with a basic car is
told to get a luxury car. Similarly, the darker toned person is told to get
treatments to make themselves fair, the person with curly hair is told to
“manage it” (make it straight). Society’s unwritten job is to make us feel bad
about what we don’t have, instead of letting us sit back and enjoy and
appreciate what we do have. We need to learn to appreciate what we have,
essential for our own mental state and mental well being.
So here begins
my list:
1. I am grateful
to have a roof over my head. Right next to my house there is an empty plot
where the owners have given to some family to temporarily live in. Those people
live partially in a tent because the building they are given is not big enough
to house everyone, they are apparently a large family in total because a lot of
extended relatives are living together. Seeing them gave me the appreciation of
having a roof.
2. Having an
international set of friends. God has blessed me with an international set of
friends, thanks to the internet. People say that you need offline friends, but
I say why harp over what I don’t have. I sit back and enjoy my online friends
and appreciate the diversity that I have been lucky enough to enjoy thanks to
my international friends list.
3. Being pain
free. I spent a long time struggling with back pain which was the result of a
combination of a sprain and an old injury causing problems. Finally, now, I am
getting it treated and as the treatment is towards the end now, I am almost
pain free. Seeing how pain had affected many aspects of my life for a long
time, I am grateful to be out of pain now and do basic activities which pain
was preventing me from doing.
4. Freedom.
There are many people who are in captivity. People locked up behind bars and
other forms of captivity exist that hinder freedom in the sense I am talking
about.
5. Being able to
read and write. There are many who are denied the right to education for
various reasons, may it be finances, or societal attitude or simple
non-availability of a school. Even I had to struggle for my education due to
simple lack of opportunity. Being able to read and write is something we take
for granted, when it is actually a big gift and blessing.
6. Faith. When
it comes to religion and faith, I will say that I consider myself to belong to
a particular religious denomination and I strongly believe it. Fortunately, or
unfortunately, I do not know, however, I do not have blind faith in that
particular religion because there are certain aspects of it that I do question.
Yet, religion and faith has been a big pillar of support for me during my most
difficult times, hence I remain grateful to have it.
7. The ability
to get out of bed in the morning. Whenever the morning sun hits our eyes and
the alarm clock rings, we get irritated like anything wishing we never had to
leave the bed. This, at least, used to be my attitude, until I got sick once.
And due to that illness, I had no energy or strength to get out of bed. No
matter how much I struggled, there was no strength to get up. This taught me a
good lesson in appreciating basic mobility.
8. Life. To be
alive. This may appear like a no brainer, but to me it is not. I once got sick
and almost died of the illness. I must’ve been, I guess, around 16 years old at
the time. Being so close to death is not a pleasant place to be at all and it
taught me to appreciate being alive.
9. Internet.
When something happens to my internet connection or I lose internet access for
a bit, I fear I am going to lose my sanity, for real. So thank you for my
internet connection. I may curse you when you go in a bad mood, but I am really
grateful to have you.
10. Books. Books
are my lifeblood, my lifeline, my obsession, my everything. I am like so
obsessed with the written word to the extent that I simply cannot imagine my
life without my books. Books have played a very essential and important role in
my life. It is because I read, that I never felt alone. Nothing can beat the
feeling of holding a book in the hand and just reading the book away. Books are
epic, hands down.
And here I
conclude my list. My apologies if this post made my sound like a self centered
brat or a show off or a self obsessed person as everything I wrote kind of does
revolve around myself. But again, just like I wrote in the beginning, this post
was mainly meant for me, not my readers. Sorry for that, Dear Reader.
