Faith And Collective Trauma 20

I am thinking this morning about gratitude, Gentle Reader, a theme on which I have already blogged to extinction, and you can rightly expect that I am going to continue to blog to extinction this subject. Why? Because gratitude is so damn important and vital to our survival and wellbeing and there just isn't enough of it. I have also blogged to extinction about how bored and disgusted I am with people who whinge on about their First World problems. We have it so good and we have so little appreciation of what we have already been given. I am not addressing this, by the way, to people who are homeless, living with chronic illness and pain, or are terminally ill, nor for those who have just lost a loved one (I am thinking here not of your little doggy or kitty, much as I love pets, but your mom, your dad, your spouse or your child) Also, if you are in prison, on death row, or being subjected to war, bombing or torture, I am not addressing this blogpost to you. Almost everyone else is fair game today. So...what do we have to be grateful for? I think of the three f's: food, friends and flowers. I never complain about having too much food in my fridge. I have at times found myself complaining about not being able to fit everything I've bought in the supermarket in my little fridge (and it is on the small side). Then I check to see if there is any spoiled food that should be discarded, which in itself is a huge reality check. I am well-off enough to have this wondrously decadent privilege of wasting food. Now, I try to be careful to not waste food, partly because I am on a low income, but also for the sheer ethic of gratitude. I have enough, more than enough. And I'm not grateful? It doesn't matter if I can't afford artisanal cheese or organic produce or fair trade whatever. I still eat well. I don't care if I can't afford to eat out. I save my money for a month's vacation every year in Costa Rica or elsewhere down south where, as well as living in blessed Spanish immersion, I will be eating out in restaurants every single day. Decent food in decent restaurants. And I have something to complain about? Because of the blessing of incredibly low rent in my BC housing apartment, I really don't have to complain about my chronically low wage. I have still been able to reduce my hours to around twenty-four a week, also thanks to early CPP (Canada Pension Plan, for those who don't live in this country), which also puts me in a further reduced rent category. For this reason, I enjoy a good, healthy diet, I enjoy my meals and still get to eat chocolate every day. For the same reason, I do not complain about having too many friends. I used to have few close friends, and even fewer people I could trust. These days, my life appears to be full of people. At times I am tempted to complain about feeling stressed trying to maintain social commitments, but it is such a small trade-off. I enjoy these people and they add so much to my life as I hope I can do for them. How trustworthy are they? We all have our flaws. How trustworthy am I? Ever since I have moved my focus from having friends to being one my social life appears to have changed and improved monumentally. This doesn't mean that there aren't disappointments. As I told a Colombian friend of mine recently, more friends sometimes means more headaches and more reasons for being driven crazy. But such is life and I think that if we are really motivated by a sense of unconditional love towards others, then we can also roll with the difficulties, the disappointments, the betrayals, the failure of nerve that can really impact one from other people. And even if you have allergies, never, ever, complain about too many flowers. Now get out there and embrace the day!