Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

When gratitude becomes an essential foundation in our lives, miracles start to appear everywhere. Emmanuel Dagher

It is good to be grateful for all the good we have in our lives and the people who provide what we need and want to live a good life. Thanks to those that provide the food we eat each day, those that keep the lights on, the sewer system working, and the energy that heats our homes, and powers our world.

We women in our hubris sometimes talk like we don’t need men in our lives but the world doesn’t work very well without them. It is a personal choice if we don’t want to share our lives with a man, but we all benefit from their work. We should never think building a society that works with all the interdependence we have would be easy to replicate.

Our society was built with men doing the work for society and women doing their work for the family. It might have been a little patronizing to be told “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.” But, it was also comforting. When there is a power outage men go out and fix it. When there is any type of disaster men are there to do what they can to protect life.

The fact that women can take care of their children without a man is a testament to the society that has been built to make it possible. If women lived in groups and men were roaming around doing what they pleased, and taking what they wanted, women and children would be in a pretty bad way.

When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears. Tory Robbins

Most of us don’t want to go back to how things used to be, and even if we think we’d like to, we’d pick and choose what we want to keep, and what we want to change. This is the sign of a good society, we have choices. Life isn’t necessarily easier when we have choices, but we love choice, even when we don’t know out of our myriad of choices what choices we should make.

Positive psychology has been criticized for its failure to acknowledge the value of negative emotions. Barbara Held from Bowdoin College in Maine, says “Positive psychology has been too negative about negativity and too positive about positivity.”

Life is about suffering, setbacks, disappointments, frustrations, and change. One of the choices we sometimes make is to put ourselves in danger and mostly we get away with it. Just because most people do not take advantage of us if we are drunk, does not mean that someone won’t. Our society can’t protect us from bad choices, but we can learn from them.

If we are grateful for all the lessons we learn in life, for everyone that contributes to our lives, for the opportunities that present themselves, and give thanks for all we have we can live in a state of gratitude.

Does an attitude of gratitude make a difference in our lives?

Living in a state of gratitude is the gateway to grace. Arianna Huffington

When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed. Maya Angelou

Gratitude opens the door to the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe. You open the door through gratitude. Deepak Chopra

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.