The Struggle Ends When Gratitude Begins

“Gratitude turns what we have into enough.” – Anonymous

When things seem tough, it is so easy for all the positivity to lose its place in my heart. But as I am beginning to consult life in a deeper way, I am starting to find an endless amount of things to be grateful for.

When I see homeless people from time to time, having to sleep on the streets all night, every night, I often think to myself, “What right do I have to show my frustration and complain about the tiniest of things that bother me?”

I live in a world where I get to wake up in the morning, breathe normally, and have a beating heart. I get to enjoy today, and hopefully wake up again tomorrow. I have the loveliest family, the most incredible friends, the yummiest food, that sometimes I feel like we take so many things for granted, including the simplest of things: life itself. That, no matter how we think of it, is the biggest gift that is given to us. Diseases, poverty, famines, storms, and droughts take hundreds and thousands of lives each year, but we are lucky- we still get to survive, we still get to exist, we are still able to dream.

I live in a place where the summers get blazing hot, and the rain sometimes comes deluging down. I feel grateful having a roof over my head when it is cold, hot, windy, or when I can hear the rain beating hard on my window.

I get to endure life’s tiny pleasures. The sunrise, the sunset, a peaceful walk in the nature, the comforting warmth of the sun on my face…

The thing is, our bodies evolved in forests. We didn’t evolve to need anything ‘extra’ in order to survive. Why then, do we always yearn for more? Didn’t our ancestors survive without attaining these extra needs? Wasn’t water, food, and shelter the only thing they needed to make it to another day?
When I think about the times I have complained about not having enough, I realize that there are some people who don’t even have access to the simplest of things.

So even during these hard times, I am so grateful to be alive- to be around my family, cooking, baking, playing board games, (I have even been doing house chores!), that I feel simply blessed to be here.

-SaaniaSparkle 🧚🏻‍♀️