For Which We Are Grateful

[The Good Reverend Roger]

It's a rough old world out there, and it's often easy to forget that things could very obviously be worse.  So I thought I'd mention a few things that we can all be grateful for.

You're not in Syria, dodging bullets (so far), but instead watching the faces of your children grow gaunt with hunger.  You're not living under a bridge, though you may have come close enough to see that once or twice.  You didn't die from lack of - or incompetent - medical care, though maybe someone you know has...But not you.  You aren't laying in a broken, bleeding heap, watching Nazis torment your children in the yard of what used to be your house.  You're not in the cancer ward, watching the nurses pretend you're a thing and not a person, because Jesus, how they do come and go.

All of these things did and do happen to people, but not us.  Not because we are right or strong or in the special favor of a deity, but because we are lucky.

Fortunate.

Golden.

Holding aces, because the worst things we have to ponder are debt, the erosion of our government, and the fact that "having friends" is now somehow a method by which to get PTSD, as one by one, they stop being as lucky as we somehow continue to be.

But that's the sort of thing you worry about later, when you're somebody else entirely.  Specifically, when you're the person standing alone, wondering where the other hell raisers went.

[Aucoq]

Sometimes it's easy to forget how good we have it compared to other times and places.  And for no other reason than the roll of the dice.

[Nast]

I liked this.

[Ziegejunge]

I try to foster a grateful state of mind. Life owes me nothing. I try to be grateful for the bad times, as there are lessons to be learned from them. I am grateful for the possibility of better times in the future, whether they manifest or not. I am grateful for the present, even when it feels like a Bad Time, because the present is really where life as we perceive it happens.

It's not always easy. I wish it were. But I understand in a very real sense that things could always, always, be far worse.

[Cuddlefish]

Sometimes it's easy to forget how good we have it compared to other times and places.  And for no other reason than the roll of the dice.

I think it's less about remembering or comparisons and more about a realization that you still have a hand to play. You're not yet out of the game. I could be wrong, but that's how I initially interpreted it.