Grateful to Be Grateful

Perhaps this is too meta, but I think it’s important.

I am grateful to be grateful, to know that there is always more to appreciate, insofar as I can recognize it. I am proud of sufficient awareness that many of my problems are not due to what I lack, but rather what I delude myself I need. By feeling grateful to feel grateful, I begin to understand that I have been—and perhaps still am—blinded by my entitlement. Life has bestowed goodness upon me, in a quantity so great that it distorts my expectations of life itself.

While this knowledge can feel like survivors’ guilt, it also feels like a call to action, a chance to be better. When I feel grateful to feel grateful, I become ever so slightly more aware. I can be cognizant of every special right that I assumed was unalienable. But I am beginning to see that nothing is unalienable. What is granted by Man can symmetrically be taken by Man. What is achieved was worked for, and still must be if not more shall we keep or attain new heights.

I am grateful to be grateful.