7 Everyday Things I'm Grateful For

This may come off as cliché and cheesy to the cynical, but I was in a contemplative state of mind, reflecting on my life and the good and bad that have come with it.  The conclusion I came to is a list of things that might seem trivial, and oftentimes get overlooked, but that have enriched my life.  Each one in turn seems to have enhanced the next, and the further down the list you go, they seem to become less essentially animal necessities and more existentially human gifts.

Seven always seems to be a magic and convenient number when people write lists like this, so here it is: 7 Everyday Things I’m Grateful For:

7. Health – Like anybody, I have my share of ailments.  I don’t have the best eyesight, and my knees give me trouble from time to time.  However, these things have never been the kind of thing to interfere too much with my ability to live day-to-day.  In fact, although my family members and I have all had our share of sicknesses and a surgery here and there, none of my siblings has ever broken a bone or had a major disability.  It is a thing that we all-too-often over look, but it is amazing how much happier we can be just by acknowledging and being grateful for our basic health.

6. Financial Necessities – When my dad was a kid, my grandpa started a real estate business with a partner.  After awhile, he started to notice some irregularities in the accounting, and by the time he realized what had happened, his business partner had taken thousands of dollars of stockholder money and disappeared.  My grandpa could have felt justified in condemning the partner and leaving the shareholders with the bill, but being a man of extreme moral integrity, he vowed to work hard to pay back all the money that had been stolen.  This led to years of less than stellar financial prospects for my dad and the rest of the family growing up, but they were given something much more valuable: a strong work ethic and sense of integrity.  Anyone who knows my dad can attest to this, and this is the situation I was born into.  His academic credentials might not be as impressive as those of others who were able to get more advanced degrees, but his resume shows an understanding of the value of hard work and respect for other people, and as such, we have never had to endure such difficult financial times as many others unfortunately have.  Of course there have been times when money has been tight, and this recent financial crisis has been one of them – my dad even lost his job, as times are particularly tough in the commercial construction sector – but he was able to find a new job relatively quickly.  As a result of this relative financial stability, my siblings and I have never had to go without the necessities of life.  We have had that same work ethic and sense of responsibility instilled in us.  Also, the fact that we have all been fortunate enough to have good health has helped us financially because we haven’t been burdened by medical bills, so we have been able to save money for a rainy day.  Think of that.  When in the history of mankind have so many people actually been able to make enough money to cover their expenses and then some, to the point where they were able to save money for some other time when it might be needed more?

5. Opportunity – From 2003 to 2005, I lived in Uruguay, South America, and I got to know some incredibly humble people.  Many of these people would get up early in the morning, work all day at an unrewarding job, and come home in time to go to bed and try to rest enough to fuel themselves for the next day’s work.  These were some of the most grateful people I had ever talked to.  They were just glad to have a way to pay the bills.  As I mentioned above, my family has been blessed with financial stability, to the point that I was able to graduate high school, go on a religious mission, get a job and go to college, and now go to grad school.  The small opportunities compound on each other to produce larger and larger ones.  Whereas thousands of people in the history of humanity were born into a life of drudgery and died forgotten, I was born in a place and time when I can make something of myself.

4. Leisure – Because of the immense opportunities I have been blessed with, I have a gift that is rather unique from the perspective of history: leisure.  Instead of pushing a plow for the rest of my life, I can read, travel, and learn.  I have a computer in my room that I can use to learn about what is going on in the world, how it impacts me, and how I can impact it.  I have a piano and several guitars at my disposal that I can use to create music.  I can go to school and learn about how the world works, and learn how to improve life for myself and for my family.

3. Art and Natural Beauty – Because of this leisure time I have to think about things not immediately related to my survival, I am able to gain an appreciation for art and natural beauty.  This is the old adage of stopping to “smell the roses.”  Anyone who has ever stepped outside in the late evening to watch the sunset or been in the mountains alone while it’s snowing can understand the beauty that I am talking about.  Goethe wrote that “one ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words.”  There is a lot of ugliness in the world, and there is a lot of beauty.  I believe that you can find beauty anywhere if you look for it.

2. Friends and Family – In a lot of ways, life is an experiment, in that sometimes the only way to learn something is by trial and error.  There is a lot of up and down in life, and that is why I am grateful for the helping influence of friends and family.  They turn “I’m in this alone” into “we’re in this together.”  The Incubus song Dig sums up the idea that I’m getting at, when the singer says, presumably to a close friend, “Lift me up from under what is covering the better part of me…Remind me that we’ll always have each other when everything else is gone.”

1. Opposition – In the LDS faith, we seem to say all the time that we are grateful for the “trials and tribulations” that we face, but when they come our way, we tend to complain and wish we didn’t have to go through them.  They are things we love to have gone through, but hate actually going through.  I admit that I, like anybody, suffer from the same short-sightedness when it comes to going through hard times.  However, I am learning to complain less and try to see the bigger picture.  A lot of the bad in the world is the result of other people’s choices, or our own.  And a lot of it is the result of things that could not be avoided.  I believe that this is part of the purpose of life.  As Alfred, Batman’s trusty butler said, we fall “so we can learn to pick ourselves back up.”  In other words, often when we are going through trials, I believe it is so that we can learn something about ourselves and grow as human beings.  Sure, life would be a lot easier if there were only good times, but after awhile, wouldn’t it become boring and tedious?  On the other hand, we become physically stronger by lifting weights, we become stronger in spirit and character by going through resistance.  Sometimes it is to learn something and grow, and other times it might just be so that we can learn to appreciate the good times.  Like I said above, this is where good friends and family are really helpful.

Like I said before, it’s really about perspective.  In the end, we can look at all the ugliness in life and be bitter, or we can look at the beauty and find ways to enhance it for ourselves and for others.  In the words of the French rock band Kyo, “La vie mérite qu’on l’aime.”