A Moment for Gratitude

My friends, I'm posting a bit late today because I struggled this morning with a bout of asthma.

As I've mentioned before on this platform, I struggle from time to time with allergies. Usually though it's just sneezing, watery and itchy eyes and headaches. On the rare occasion, my allergic attacks are severe and I cannot breathe. Today was one of those days, and so I spent much of the day heavily medicated and literally trying to catch a breath. I'm better now though, and so I'm choosing to use this post to express gratitude.

There is so much that I, we, have to be thankful for, and the way I see it, sometimes it's all about a matter of perspective.

Though I know very few of you here, I'd say that we should all be thankful for:

• Electricity and the Internet

• Literacy and the ability to write, some of us in two or more languages.

• Read Cash and other platforms that pay us a stipend to write.

Some of us can also be thankful for:

• Good health

• Love, friendships and family

It's very easy, my friends, to be focused that we do not have and the things that we desire, and to feel sorry for ourselves. It's much more difficult to focus on the things we do have and to be appreciative and to celebrate those blessings.

Electricity and the Internet

A few days ago, a powerline near to my home went out and for the few hours that there was no internet connection, I was stressed. I had become dependent on living in a connected world. There are many people in the world though who have absolutely no access to electricity in any way, and this is to say they do not even have a patchy and inconsistent electrical or internet connection, and yet they survive and many of them are content and grateful for the lives they lead. How then can I complain when I am inconvenienced?

Coherent thought and the ability to write and communicate

Literacy and the ability to think critically and to communicate those thoughts are skills that are very often taken for granted. In my country, a few generations ago, in fact right up my family tree, there were people who were not literate and who could not read or write, but instead used thumb prints to identify themselves. There are still millions of people in the world today who are illiterate.

On this platform, I understand that there are many people here who can speak and write in at least two or more languages. This is a great skill that many people in the world do not have, and it opens up doorways to communicate effectively with people who may not understand your native tongue.

Platforms that pay us to write

Let's keep it real. Major social media platforms do not pay us to write or share a thing, and yet we go on there and give these platforms unlimited access to our lives and private thoughts.

And while there have been platforms that pay writers to blog, the entry curve is sometimes high, the payout is low unless you've amassed hundreds of thousands of followers, and one has to leap through many hurdles to even be considered.

Platforms like Read Cash, Noise Cash, Publish0x, Hive, Blurt, Appics and others have eliminated these barriers and opened the door to a new manner of content creation, making it easier for anyone, wherever you are in the world, to earn from day one, and in some cases, to earn handsomely as well. And rather than function like a cash grab where you come on, write, and run off, many of these platforms are structured in such a way as to encourage interaction and communication.

Perhaps some of us take advantage of this opportunity and really try to learn from each other and to network, perhaps some are just here to game the system and make off with as much coins as they can. The thing is though, if I serve you a dish of delicacies and you do not eat, then the loss is yours. And I'd say, it takes a really near sighted person to not see the value in connections.

Good Health and Life

This morning, my friends, I struggled to breathe. And in those moments, as I gasped for breath, I was reminded again of how fortunate I was. Some medication and a few hours of rest and I am able to get back up and to communicate and to integrate well. There are many people who would give an arm and a leg for this inconvenience, because they may be grappling with comorbidities, because they may be hospitalized and incapacitated, because the doctors may have just served them a sober pill, advising them and their loved ones that there is nothing more that they can do and it is time to make preparations.

I had a friend once who passed away in her 20s. She was a beautiful girl, very energetic and, until she was felled by cancer, full of life. After her first diagnosis, she lived for less than 12 months.

In her final days, I visited her and regaled her with wild tales of escapades during our youth. The entire room doubled over with laughter, of course, as I took center stage and performed, but my attention was focused on my friend, and though she laughed along with us, there were moments when she would silently stare off into the distance, and her face was sooo sad, and I wondered what she thought of in those moments.

My friend's transition hurt us all deeply because we felt that she had so much more to contribute. But it was her time, and so we chose to be grateful for the years we were blessed to know her.

While I cannot diagnose anyone's health, I'm no doctor, and I certainly cannot speak for the health of persons I've never met in real life, I'd go out on a limb here to say that we're all alive and we've all got the wit and faculties and relative health to get onto Read Cash and to write. This is something that we should each be thankful for. Every day when we wake, however uncomfortable our circumstances, we should be thankful for a new day and a fresh chance to live and to make a difference somehow, if only by our words on platforms such as these, in the lives of others.

Family and Friendships

I read a post by Aimure, a great post by the way, about Truisms that aren't True. He has two article up on those, and if you get a chance, I'd suggest you read them. They're very cleverly written, thought provoking pieces. One point he made in one of the articles, I believe, is that there is the saying, "blood is thicker than water", and he went on to discuss how this is not necessarily so.

Interestingly, in that post, Aimure makes the comment that there are two types of families, the blood relations you do not choose and the family that you do, the deep connections that you make that are sometimes stronger even than blood ties. Whichever family we ascribe to, this is something that we should each celebrate every single living moment because the sad fact is that there are some people who truly do not have anyone.

Conclusion

And so, my friends, as you see, there is a lot that we can choose to celebrate rather than complain about. Of course to be sure there will always be moments when we each give in to a rant. I have more than my fair share of those moments. The sun does not shine everyday, and if it does, we'd have drought, right? So too will our moods change from time to time. But I try my best never to wallow, never to stagnate, never to bury myself in self pity.

In fact, my friends, when life serves you lemons, what do you do? Me, I make lemonade, lemon cakes, lemon scones, and lemon donuts with lemon glaze, and I throw a party.

It's what I've been taught by my ancestors, some of whom were brought to this part of the world against their will, brutally cut off from their mother country and blood relations, forced to abandon their language, their beliefs, their culture; branded, dehumanised and made to work under the most severe and inhumane conditions for generations. They still found joy. They still found reason to sing songs and tell stories and to love and laugh and party and celebrate and persevere against all odds. My mild inconveniences today pale in comparison to what they endured. How then can I, standing on their shoulders, complain about my view?

I refuse to allow temporary hurdles to become permanent barriers. I refuse to wallow in self pity for minor hiccups, not when my fore parents faced, endured, survived and overcame so much more.

After all, my friends, isn't choosing to be happy and to be thankful despite any challenge we may face, the most liberating feeling of all?

Resources:

• http://uis.unesco.org/en/topic/literacy