Counting My Blessings

When I grumble about…..

• The food under the roof of my mouth not being as delectable as I expected it to be, I think of someone rummaging through trash cans to find a few morsels.
• Someone hurling a random insult at me, I think of a person who is insulted physically and mentally and who can give no vent to her feelings.
• The house I live in being like a warzone, I remind myself of the myriad soldiers braving the odds and dying in the literal warzone and the helpless victims of a real war.
• Academic subjects being unfeasible for me to fathom, I regard someone for whom the prospect of having an education will remain the figment of a dream.
• Not being able to withstand a mild bout of sickness, I feel grateful that I’m not at death’s mercy.
• The people in my life, I consider people who are jettisoned- who have no one and nothing to love or to live for.
• Friends whose antics I can’t digest, I think of people who long for companionship or of individuals who have been backstabbed by their faux amis.
• Exams being too complicated to study for, I remember that there are people who are still illiterate out there who would grab the opportunity to see the insides of a school and hold a pen in their hands.
• Traffic being too congested on a street, I number myself amongst the fortunate lot who haven’t been hit by a truck.
• Noisy people and situations, I think much later that there are people who don’t hear the music and the cacophony of the world because sadly, they can’t.
• Stagnant water on the road getting my jeans or my footwear all mucky, I bring to mind that there are human beings who have no choice but to settle on that water for drinking.
• The smell of garbage bothering my nostrils, I remind myself that there are scavengers gathering it without doing so much as shielding their noses.
• The weather being frigid or torrid, I count myself lucky to be sheltered from the sun and the rain unlike the unknown many who have to scurry helter-skelter in the hopes of finding shelter.
• Not being appreciated enough, I recall that there are people being degraded, depreciated, derided and defiled.
• Not being beautiful enough, I thank the heavens that my senses and my physical form are still intact- free from disfiguration and indelible scars.

I could enumerate many more examples like these, but from the aforementioned matter of this article, maybe I have given myself and my readers a little gist (or a big one) on what it means to count one’s blessings, because often enough, one tends to lament one’s shortcomings while pushing past the point of oblivion the multifarious bounties that have generously been bestowed on us.