Yet more thankfulness

I am thankful for health. Sure, there are some creaky mornings, but basically my body does what I ask of it and that is something which I do not take for granted. I know far too many people who cannot walk a mile or get out of breath climbing stairs, people whose health limits their actions. And, while feeling sorrow for them, I am thankful to not be among their number.

I am thankful to live in a time with visual correction. I am very near-sighted and have been wearing glasses since I was 6; in most other times in history, something would have eaten me long since.

I am thankful for DVDs, and not just those lovely shiny disks but everything they represent. When I was younger even VHS was not yet available, and it was a challenge to track down many movies. Now, not only new films but works for which I have been searching for literally decades are available to me. This is a wonder about which I shall never become jaded. The films of the world are to be had, for the asking.

I am thankful for CDs, as I was thankful for LPs and will be thankful for whatever comes next, as I can always have my favorite works about me.

I am thankful for music, that it can be created and passed on and shared and recorded to be enjoyed again. I am thankful that I can create it myself.

More thankfulness

I am thankful for women.

I am thankful to live in a time and place where I can experience women in all of their possibilities, free from the strict proscriptions surrounding most male-female interactions in history. I am thankful to be free to have women as friends. And co-workers, and teachers, and peers.

I am thankful for the eternally fascinating beauty which is woman.

I am thankful to live in a time and place where the female form may be seen and appreciated and not cloistered away or concealed beneath heaps of fabric or, obscenely, viewed as obscene.

I am thankful for denim jeans, and the way they reveal the female form.

I am thankful to be married to a woman who understands my appreciation of women, and does not strive to eradicate it (as do so many wives).

Thankful for...

I am thankful for a world with so many opportunities to learn. Think about it -- we have more access via more media to more knowledge than anytime ever before in the human experience. The average person can learn as much as they are able and care to, in any field. This has not been true for much of human history.

I am thankful that, for all of the knowledge available to us, there are still a great many mysteries worthy of consideration. Every answer raises new questions, keeping things lively and interesting.

I am thankful to live in a time and place where my beliefs and learning can be of my own devising, and not sharply delineated by "those in authority". We are free to believe as we please, study subjects which interest us, and to disagree with popular convention if we see fit to do so.

I am thankful to live in peace. I am perfectly aware that there are all too many places around the globe where peace is not the norm, but that is exactly my point: I live in a time and place where I have an assumption of peace. And just because I can assume that my life will be as peaceful tomorrow, I should never take it for granted.

I am thankful to live in a democracy. Sure, our system is not perfect, but it is a far sight better than most of the systems throughout history. The mere fact that we can criticize and disagree with our system would be a freedom undreamt of by many of our ancestors.

I am thankful, and continually marvel, to live in a time with such wonders as space travel, and microscopy, and x-rays, and telecommunications. Think about it -- for most of human history most people experienced little change, saw little that was new or outside of a few mile's radius of where they were born. But suddenly there are all of these amazing developments in a very tiny slice of human time, and of all possible times to be born I was here to see humans walk upon the moon and to see it as a child and be forever changed by that sight and thought. That I was present to see such a thing is to me a miracle as remarkable and precious as the amazingly narrow combination of factors which allows life to exist on this planet (neither too close nor too far, with a magnetic core to generate a screen against radiation, and a largish moon to create balance and tides). We have devices which can delve from the smallest to the largest, revealing the connections between them in the form of repeating shapes and patterns. We can peer inside living tissue, to gain further insights into the remarkable mechanisms which consitute life. We can instantly share our insights around the world, adding to the growing sum of human knowledge. In this, we are blessed beyond the wildest imaginings of most people in human history.

On being thankful

On the way to work today, I thought of a story idea that was so good it actually gave me chills. While I was still tingling, I thought of a new bit for an older piece. Then still later the first paragraph of a story popped fullblown into my head, from whence who can say.

In between, on the drive I noticed some mine workings I had not previously spotted, up a hillside not far from work and easily scouted while on lunch break. More to explore. Life is good.

Life is good. Not to sound all Pollyanna-ish about it, but life is a good thing to have and I want to state my appreciation of it. And, since the day called Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching, it seems appropriate to put it in terms of thankfulness.

So, until the day gets here, I am going to set down those things for which I am grateful, send out a big Thank You Note to the universe.

It seems the least I can do.