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Thankful

Reasons to be thankful.

Contents

• Background
• List
• See Also

Background

I am incredibly fortunate for the opportunities I've been afforded throughout my life. I used to be unappreciative, not taking into account the impact that luck and my parents' good will had on my well-being and status.

So in the spirit of Thanksgiving (the day this post was started in 2021), this post is a running list of all the reasons I have to be generally thankful. As with other posts, it's not meant to boast or belittle, but rather to serve as a reminder to myself of how good I have it and how bad others do.

List

• I didn't get caught when making poor decisions. I suspect my life would be significantly different had I been caught
• My drinking water is reliably clean. I don't have to worry about lead or diseases being present—I can simply drink directly from the tap.
• I have a reliable, functioning, somewhat-stylish car that is able to get me to and from work, my hobbies, and social places. I do not have to get to a bus stop many hours early to ensure I'll be on time for where I'm going. Further, my car has air conditioning and gets good MPG.
• My college was entirely paid for and I have no student loans coming out of school. From Education Data:

  Approximately 42.9 million Americans with federal student loan debt each owe an average $37,105 for their federal loans.

  So instead of worrying about putting a good portion of my paychecks towards student loans (of which very little of the principal would be subtracted), I can focus on putting money elsewhere (investments, hobbies, amenities, etc).
• My parents had a happy marriage my entire life. My brother and I never saw any legitimate fighting or arguing. The U.S. Census' Number, Timing, and Duration of Marriages and Divorces: 2016 gives an idea of how common divorces are:

  Among ever-married adults 20 years and over, 34 percent of women and 33 percent of men had ever been divorced, while the percentage ever divorced was highest for adults aged 55 to 64 (about 43 percent for both sexes).

• I have never been truly hungry. Food has been plentiful my entire life, either in the form of a home-cooked meal, snacks in the refrigerator or pantry, or a restaurant. I never had to worry about lunch money like some of my classmates. Feeding America's Hunger in America page provides an overview of how big of a problem hunger is:

  more than 38 million people, including 12 million children, in the United States are food insecure.

  where food insecurity is defined as:

  a lack of consistent access to enough food for every person in a household to live an active, healthy life.

• I am fairly intelligent.

See Also

• Underrated reasons to be thankful