I am grateful

2020 Chapter I Section 8

I am grateful.

I realise every single day how lucky I am to be born to a family like mine. They are not perfect by any means, but they let me thrive in whatever ways I want to. I also think I have been able to make good friends who make my life happier.

I used to be very pessimistic. I used to blame my “bad luck” for everything. Anything and everything that happened to me was never good enough. Not that I compared my life to others or got jealous if others had anything I wanted, but I just felt my life was not good enough.

“Why does this happen to me all the time?”

For the past few years, I have been trying to see the positive in everything and I feel every day has something that makes me stop and think “I am lucky to be here right now”.

At the beginning of 2019, I decided to start posting daily Instagram stories where one of the things I want to mention is about things I am grateful for, on that specific day. Now, I will be honest with you some days were rough and I did not post for a good chunk of time in the middle of the year.

I had a very rough patch in 2019 with my health and that really affected me psychologically. (Chronic pain can really affect the mind negatively.)

Even though I didn’t share it on a social media site, even though not a single soul got to know what I felt deep down in my heart, I felt grateful to be alive every single day.

I am privileged in my own way and I am very aware of that. I am grateful for the shelter that I have, the food I get, the education I was given and most of all the opportunity to follow my dreams.

I think there are too many negative things happening all over the world. I know it’s easy to think the world is coming to an end (maybe it is, who knows!) and we have more villains than heroes. But, I truly think even with the world figuratively and literally burning right now, there is so much beauty and good left in all of us. I always try and think of that.

I think it’s easy to see the bad in things but it takes a lot to see the ‘inner beauty’.

The political atmosphere in my country is wild right now and I think seeing how much venom and hatred people have for each right now, I guess I just wanted to take out some time and think about what I am truly grateful for.

What are you grateful for today?

P.S. I am aware I am privileged to be sitting and writing about getting the opportunity to look at the bright side of things and be grateful for it. Many do not have that. I try not to just be aware of it but help out in whatever ways I think makes sense to me. I am not perfect and I definitely am not doing enough and yes that bothers me. I feel guilty about that 24/7, so let’s not get there.