Being Grateful

And so it happened that after being away from one of my social media websites I went in just to check on a message I had been sent and a wonderful friend had tagged me on a status, the idea was that he was nominating 3 people to write 3 things they are grateful for each day for 5 days.
And yes it did not mean I had to do it, but you know what I figured hey! It's a great idea and a great exercise especially since as humans we have the tendency to complain about things and look at them in such a negative perspective that we forget that some things we complain about we can change and the ones that we can't change are probably there as a lesson we must learn whether we want to or not, therefore it should not really be a big deal right?
As I started thinking about three things I was grateful for yesterday, I realized that I just kept adding to my list, there were not just three things I had in mind but several of them, and possibly this happens to me because I am just an avid thinker and if someone gets my mind started on something I just keep on going, so I figured I would make a slightly larger list and would actually make this list about things most people are rarely thankful for because they see those things as negative things and they tend to have a concept of a Utopian society that if existed would probably be extremely boring and in a way possibly depressing.
So here I go:

1. I am thankful for each person that has come into my life and intentionally hurt me somehow.
   Each of those persons, while they did some damage they also taught me a few lessons, lessons that had they not hurt me the way they did I would not have learned. Thanks to them I have learned how to spot good people, it was not easy but I learned there are certain things people who are out for themselves always do and say that those who are not don't do. Learning the difference has really helped me improved my life and taught me that it is not about how many people you have around but about the quality of the people you have around and when you get rid of the bad people, the ones that are left (even though they are not too many) make life even better! They have also taught me to be thankful for the few good people I have around, they made those people even more important and more valuable to me and that alone has increased the level of gratefulness towards those few good people, so much so that it seems I keep attracting them somehow and keep getting rid of the bad ones. 
2. I am thankful for sickness.
   Yes, why would anyone be thankful for that right? Well, let me tell you one thing about sickness... Anytime I've gotten sick it has been because I am working myself too much and I've learned that it is my body's way of saying "hello!!! you need to step back and relaxed a little" it is when I don't listen that things get worse. Today my little one woke up without a voice and coughing, I had a sore throat, the first thing I wanted to do (which is usually what the first thing most people do when they don't feel good) is complain, why ohh why am I getting sick and my daughter is getting sick after just one week of school and when I have so much stuff to do, meanwhile all I really want to do is go lay down in bed and sleep it off... Then it hit me, I needed to slow down a bit, she needed to slow down a bit, we both have been in this different way of living and just going along our lives on our own time throughout the summer and now we have to adjust to the schedule that is set not by us but by other people and the adjustment will take a little bit of time, and it's ok, it's ok to just take a small break, better to take a break than to get even sicker. Not only this but sickness reminds me of the times I am healthy and reminds me to enjoy those times even more, same when I hear about other people's sickness, it reminds me that it could be worse, it reminds me that I am not invincible, that I am a mere mortal and whether or not I feel like crap my job is to enjoy life as much as I can even when I am really not enjoy it much. 
3. I am thankful for the struggles that life has given me.
   Yep, I am definitely thankful for that, the struggles I've been through have taught me to see life in a different way. They have taught me how uncertain life is and therefore have allowed me to live a life where even if I plan certain things when things don't go as planned (and 99.9% of the time they really don't go as planned) I don't dwell on them too much while most people do, we want certainty in a world that is completely uncertain. We all want that, we want to be certain of things even though we know that there are no guarantees... ok there is one guarantee, you are guarantee to die, but you don't know when, where or how, everything else is not guaranteed, everything else depends not just on your decisions but on the decisions of billions of other people that live in this planet and are (I believe) connected to one another. So yes, I am thankful for life's struggles, they've taught me to live with less anger and less stress and to prioritize things in a way that most people don't.
4. I am thankful for death.
   Death is often seen as something so negative, especially when it happens to someone young and that has not "lived" to what most people would call a full life. The thing is that as I stated above, death is guaranteed for everyone, whether we believe it as a reality or not, the concept of someone dying and passing on is the same for everyone and it will happen to everyone. My acceptance of death and that it can come at any time reminds me to live life too, whether things are going great or they are not going so great, knowing and accepting that I can die at any time has made me see life in general and the life of others in a completely different way, a way that I've come to painfully realize that the majority of people (especially people my age) don't really accept because they are stuck on the believe and hope that they will be alive tomorrow and the next day and the day after for many many years to come. Some even create anxieties about dying and go about their lives worrying about the things they do that might kill them so instead of living they are pretty much dead before they actually die. The older generation though, most of them, and psychologically you get to the age when you accept that death will come and so that's when they actually start living each day, yes they have their complaints but they come to an understanding that life is limited and so they worry less about certain things like debts and actual things, but most tend to always go back and express with regret how much they wished they would not have put so much emphasis on those things back when they were my age because then their lives would  have been fuller. Even when you read about what is something that most people regret while they are dying it all comes down to the things that we as young adults believe we have to put so much emphasis on right now that we forget all the actual important things that we should be doing. 
5. I am thankful for debt.
   Yes, yes, WHAT? Most people want to get out of debt, they really just don't want to be in debt at all. But see we live in a society where we have been taught that we have to borrow money in order to buy certain things that we "must have" we get into extremes amount of debt, as students we use loans to pay our way through school, then we get out of school and we are worried about how the heck we will pay those loans. We complain about the loans, we complain about the car payment, we complain about the mortgage payment, the credit card bills... the list goes on. But what we don't realize is that for every single dollar we have ever borrowed we have actually acquired something we wanted at the particular point in time that we had acquire the debt, whether it was our education, or the new car or the house, but we wanted those things. Even if we say ohh hey I got debt for hospital bills, well you went to the hospital because you wanted to get healthy. Or I got into a lot of debt because things broke down in my house or my car, or some sort of natural disaster happened, still you wanted to fix those things that you originally wanted and with those things that you acquire comes a greater sense of responsibility because now you have more things to take care of. Anyway... to my point, debt has taught me to live a simpler life. There was a point in my life where I could walk into any store and I would get a huge credit line because I made enough money and I had excellent credit, but then shit happened and everything was lost in a manner of days, it all went to hell so I was forced to live a simpler life. The simpler life is not a life that most of the people around me are ok with and therefore is a constant battle to get them to stop telling me that I need this or I need that but... It has been worth it to me, and had it not been for debt and the complains of others about their debt, I would not be able to live simply and work towards memories rather than work for things. It really is freeing when you think about it. 
6. I am grateful for injustice.
   Yes, yes, I might be completely insane on that one, how can one be grateful for that right? Well... Let me tell you something, without injustice I would not know or enjoy those times when something just happens. And even though in my view of things each person has a slightly different concept of what justice is and the "reality" is that deep down we all have a collective concept of what justice is, and that concept changes as we evolve as a society which is why most times we can't even define what justice is, we tend to give examples of what it is, but we would not have those examples if we did not have examples of injustice.

So there... I am sure there are more things I could think about that most people would want to completely get rid of and do without because hey, they are not so good things for them and therefore would never think about being grateful for them but there is always something that those things teach us and the lessons we learn are part of the life we are living right now and one should never be ungrateful of the lessons we learn. In the end that is what we are here for, to learn, and the more that we fight the learning experiences the more we will be put in situations where we will be forced to learn those lessons, the harder we will make our lives and the more grateful you are for the things that happen to you the more positive you will begin to see your life...