Blessed Life
You know, I don’t have a perfect life. Things haven’t worked out quite the way I had planned in my mind. I find myself in a situation that isn’t quite ideal, and things aren’t at their brightest. Yet for all of that, I can’t help but believe that I’ve had a pretty blessed life. Having been born and raised here in the States, I think I just take some things for granted.
All the really terrible things are always “over there”. Across an ocean. In a different country. All the horrible stuff, I watch on the news. Images of people dead in the streets. Dozens, hundreds. Images of buildings riddled with bullets. Images of people picking weeds to make “soup”, because they have no real food. Car bombs, assassinations, a group of people blown up at a voting booth. People afraid of “vanishing” if they say the wrong thing, or wear the wrong clothes, or witness the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Yeah, I can say I’ve lived a blessed life.
I can’t comprehend the reality that some people have to live in. I can’t imagine being afraid to go to the corner store, because someone in line might be a suicide bomber. Or being afraid to drive near other cars, because the car next to me might be a car bomb. I can’t imagine my mom being killed for walking down the street without my father next to her. I can’t imagine dying, simply because I have no food. I don’t know what it’s like, to live in constant fear.
I just don’t even know how to honestly relate to the suffering some people live through every single day. It just isn’t part of my world, my little bubble of existence.
When I was a kid, I worried about things like homework. I didn’t worry about having a grenade thrown at me on the way to school. Or having my school blown apart by a rocket. I wondered what might be on the lunch menu. I didn’t wonder what garbage can might have a scrap of food so that I would have the energy to live another day. I lift a handle and I have water. I flip a switch and I have light. I open a door and I have food. I open my wallet and I have some money. I have a roof over my head, and nobody in my family has ever been killed.
Some people would read those last 5 sentences and say “that sounds like a miracle, you must live in heaven”, and how sad a thought is that?
So yeah, I have a blessed life. My family is blessed, my friends are blessed. We might lack for some things, but we are all so, so much better off than others. I’ll try to always keep that in mind before I complain about some silly little thing that means nothing.
