Gratitude Helps Your Attitude

Gratitude is and should be a personal issue. I am grateful daily that I was born in the United States. Statistics say that an woman born in the United States is luckier than 75% of the rest of the world. If this is true, then my gratitude is overflowing. I am not sure I really believe the statistics as I think women of the european continent seem to have it ok.

I am grateful for being alive at this time of the world. I don't think the life of cavewomen would interest me much. I think sometimes we as a people have too much and are not willing enough to share. I think we put a price on too much and do not do enough for each other without cost.

I think often of the life of my grandparents. They were born in the early 1900's, both to large families and both had to left home at a young age. They did not meet until they were in their late twenties and had absolutely nothing but each other to start life with.

My grandmother married the first time two months before her 13th birthday. That seemed awful to me when she first told me.

" I didn't know what i was doing." she told me. " I was just a kid with a mean than life stepfather. He didn't care. To him it was only one less mouth to feed."

I could only nod with understanding as she told me what little bit I knew of my natural grandfather. I never knew or met him. A picture would be nice but I don't even have that. I can only look at the feature of my natural father and search for those features not belonging to my grandmothers' people. I think surely my dark brown eyes came from my paternal grandfather but know this may not even be true. Both sides of my family have largely American Indian blood so even searching those windows of the soul seem futile. So my search for the unknown continues.

My natural grandfather walked away from my grandmother and their one surviving son not too many years after they married. My grandmother had to support herself and my father until she married her second husband. She was married to him 58 years before he died.

During The Great Depression they did not even have a home. They had to build a one room log cabin on someone elses land. They were grateful to have such a good friend. After the dirt floored cabin was built, there were as many as five living in the cabin at one time. Yet they held steady and survived. Later, after WWII and the death of my father, they adopted my brother and me. For this I am most certainly grateful.

My gratitude is daily. I am grateful for having the adopted parents I had. I am grateful every day that my sons are alive and well. The story of identity goes on and many peope say what a hard life I have had. I do not know anything about that because life was life. It was as it was and there is not one thing anyone can do about that.

To be grateful I believe there is always someone worse off than I am. I am grateful for the smallest of favors someone may do for me. To them is is probably nothing to me it means a lot. I am grateful for the way my life has been and my ability to accept it as it was and as it is today. I belive gratitude makes for a much happier life. Being grateful for the hard times and the sad times makes me appreciate the good times and the glad time.

Gratitude is self defined but I think as a whole it is one of the most wonderful gifts a person can give themselves.