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...

Three kinds of people...

I am not a fan of categorizing anyone, but in the past couple of weeks I have realized that there are three kinds of people, and I am talking about it in a spiritual sense here, you can basically put each person you meet in one of the following categories:

The "Good" kind:
I put good in between quotation marks because the reality is that every person has a little bit of "bad" or "evil" in them, we are not 100% good and that is ok, but the "good" people have more good in them than they do bad. These are the people who have the ability to make you smile just by them smiling. The people who have an aura, a field of energy, that always draws you to them and when it does you just feel good and at peace with yourself. These are the people that even when they are having a bad day they are still able to make you smile somehow. These people are also ones who like to see the good in the world, the good in everyone, usually they tend to trust more, especially the people that are closest to them and because of that they tend to get hurt more but in the end they always pull back and never lose that hope and faith which always radiates out of them and spreads wherever they go.

The "Bad" or "evil" kind:
Again in quotation marks because we all have a bit of each side right. There are people in the world who are only out for themselves, these are the ones that care about absolutely no one else but them and what they can get out of a situation whether the situation is good or bad. It is about them, there is no remorse in their actions whatsoever, some of you might say: well this is the psychopaths out there and there is thankfully not many of them plus they all end up in jail anyway and I will tell you: yes, the psychopaths and sociopaths are in this category but not all psychopaths and sociopaths turn out to be criminals, some of them go through their lives trying to "steal" the best out of everyone. These are the people who you meet and you always feel like there is something not right about them, there is always this bad nervous feeling and you end up ignoring it sometimes because it usually makes absolutely no sense at all... Some, if not most of us are taught that we have to give people a chance to show us what they are made of and how they truly are, with these kind of people you will always just see what they want you to see and what they need you to see in order to get what they want. These are people with whom you have to be very careful and just be more aware of how they treat others and not how they treat you, it is how they treat others that will show you exactly who they are.

The third and what I believe is the most dangerous kind of people, the Neutral kind:
This is what the world is mostly filled with, the people who can go either way depending on who they surround themselves with. The saying "tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are" is what applies to these people, the good kind of people are not easily influenced by the bad because the good always want to do good, they always weight in the options and what is best for everyone involved, the bad people will always want what is best for themselves no matter what that might be or who it might hurt. But the neutral people, they can be easily persuaded to one side or the other at any given time, these people, when you encounter them, spiritually you don't really feel anything bad or good about them unless they are influenced by a good or bad being in their lives at the time you meet them and even then you don't quite make up the energies they throw because essentially if you are one of the good kind of people then they sort of absorb that energy and you feel as if they are not a threat. And that is why this are the most dangerous people you can ever encounter and unfortunately the ones that you will encounter more often than not. People that are easily persuaded one way or the other and that are usually targets for the "evil" that hovers around because it is easy to use them for your own gain and evil is always looking for those who will easily bring them what they need.

With that said, I started to think if one could ever be completely safe from any of these? I have seen all three kinds and been surrounded by all of them at one point in my life and it has been hard lessons that I have had to learn from each encounter, but each has taught me something and I hope that I never forget it. For the "bad" people I have encounter, I have learned that the majority of times the worst you can do is fight with them, or fight back if they are trying to fight with you, they feed on this energy, it makes them more powerful, more aware of what is going on and makes them extremely careful which in turn keeps you from finding out who they really are. It's best to stay away and listen to your gut when you meet these people and you feel uneasy about them, but if you can then the more you observe them the more you will learn, strategy is the best way to win when it comes to them. With them you just really have to take a step back and pretend you are watching a movie.
The good kind of people are the ones that have given hope back to me, that there are some that really care about others and really want to make this a better place, that there are others that want to inspire, be balanced and look at both sides of situations without judgement and with a lot of objectivity. That there are people that really could change the world if they did not doubt themselves so much. But that is the soul of the good person, they are always thinking they could have done better, they could be better and that everything they do can affect someone else in a way they don't want them to be affected, and they always doubt after they have done something good whether that something was good for everyone, even if it is not good for themselves, everyone else has to be ok. The best lesson they teach is that you cannot always make everyone happy but just because you cannot make everyone happy it does not mean you are hurting someone, that we need to try really hard to doubt ourselves a little less and in the end rely on the faith and hope that it will turn out alright no matter what.
And the neutral people, the most dangerous of all three... Because they are easily influenced by outside factors, these are people that if they are under the influences of a "bad" person or being, they are also able to be influenced by a "good" person, and if you find that they are being influenced by someone bad then while being careful if this is someone you care about you will be able to influence them in a good way. They are not looking to hurt anyone but they have the capability to do so without remorse when someone bad has taken "control", they are able to be cruel just as much as they are able to be caring, they are what you will find the most in this world and because of all of that, these are the people you need to learn to live with and be the most careful of while at the same time be a good influence in them so that they are more of a person that does good rather than one that does bad.