Thursday, January 17, 2008

Life as We Know It

Today was just an ordinary Thursday except for the fact that we had a store visit at work from our district manager. It was all good. We had a good report basically, she has to find something to suggest or change, it is her job but it is all mostly little things.

My parents called me before I got off work to invite me for supper as my mother had cooked a pot of spaghetti and that was nice not to have to cook or worry about what I was going to eat.

Joy came to me in just the fact that I'm alive, have a job, live in a wonderful country, have healthy parents, healthy children and grandchild and that I am warm tonight, have food in my house and clothes to wear.

I read recently these facts:

Electricity: About 2 billion people in this world have none. That's 30 percent of the world's population.

Food: Worldwide there are 840 million people starving.

Water: 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water and 2.6 people lack basic sanitation.

Energy: On average 1 American uses as much energy as 531 Ethiopians. (This one really blows me away!)

Think about how we come home, flick a switch for instant light, can't decide if we want fish or chicken for supper and take a bath in a tub full of hot water.

I've decided to be more aware and try and not take anything for granted.

Lance Armstrong put it well, "I take nothing for granted. I now have only good days or great days."

2 comments:

Chellie said...

After my power was out for 6 days during our ice storm, it really changed my perspective on things. Electricity was just "there" and I had never really thought about it. Now I am so thankful for it, seriously.

I saw a medical mission show recently where a young boy stayed here for several months with an American host home while he had some kind of head surgery. He was from an extrememly poor country. When he went back to his country, he told his parents that the coolest thing was doors that would open and close automatically like we have at our hospitals.

Then he told his friends that our country has "this box you can turn on where music comes out and you can dance to it." Wow. That made such an impression on me. We are so blessed in the U.S.

Robbin said...

Yes, we are Chellie, and I hope we never lose sight of that. I think too much sometimes and wonder what made us so lucky to be the ones born over here? I'm thankful of course but I wish for us all to know these blessings and I don't understand sometimes why that just isn't so.