Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Gratitude

I sometimes forget how great life is.  I take advantage of my health, education, career, family, and friends.  I sometimes feel that we dwell too much on the negative things we have experienced; on the things that we do not have; on the things that people have said to us. The one bad thing we experience in one day overwhelmes all the great things we experienced that whole week.  I am amazingly grateful for those moments when I am reminded in one way or another that life is good.  It is a gift to enjoy. It is the kind of gift that only gets better with re gifting.  When I meet or hear of people who have suffered things that I cannot even imagine, and yet remain hopeful, upbeat, loving, kind, giving, and energetic, I am humbled.

"I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet." -- Persian proverb

 "No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and legitimate reasons for having passed through it." -- George Washington Carver

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope and, crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." -- Robert F. Kennedy