Be thankful.
Awhile back I was sitting at home, thinking about how I'm going to try and pull things together this spring so I can buy a house. I forget what the specific que was, but something got me thinking about the whole concept of the "American Dream."
I hear a lot of people talking about how "The Rich get Richer and the Poor get Poorer." Well, my grandpa used to say "The Rich get Richer and the poor go to jail", although he had a different view on things. I suppose if I were to also alter this old quote for my own beliefs on the matter, it would be "The rich get richer, and the poor get richer but less happy."
No one seems to like to talk about the rising standard of living. You will know see people who proclaim themselves to be barely getting by, but they have a big screen TV, a car less than a decade old, and many other comforts. Americans tend to not like to speak about this. Having a car in America is such a standard thing in many areas (larger cities with robust community travel services, i.e. trains, bus routes, et cetera are different, understandably) that not having a car when you're 16 is seen as being very poor. Of course, in other parts of the world having a your own private vehicle places you among the elite. Perhaps happiness is out of reach for so many people because the media sets the bar so high. There was a day when someone would be the happiest person in the world just for putting food on the table.
I guess I'm thinking about these things today because I have been working with a co-worker from the other half of the world (literally, 12 hour time difference). Unfortunately I had to have him stay pretty late tonight for his time, and he was teasing me that his fiancé was very angry at me. I told him to be safe going home at this hour, and he said it would be awhile before he could go due to riots, which were primarily incited by "racial" (more so, regional) comments by a politician, that politician's arrest, and the subsequent rioting by that politician's supporters. Apparently 4 of my friend's co-workers in the same office had been, as he put it, "manhandled" by rioters just while trying to get to work.
I guess sometimes we forget how well we have it. We are in the middle of what could be considered a fairly intense election, by our standards, but I cannot see there ever being a night where it is not safe for me to go home.
And no matter how many things I think our government does wrong at times, things like that are still worthy of being thankful for.
I hear a lot of people talking about how "The Rich get Richer and the Poor get Poorer." Well, my grandpa used to say "The Rich get Richer and the poor go to jail", although he had a different view on things. I suppose if I were to also alter this old quote for my own beliefs on the matter, it would be "The rich get richer, and the poor get richer but less happy."
No one seems to like to talk about the rising standard of living. You will know see people who proclaim themselves to be barely getting by, but they have a big screen TV, a car less than a decade old, and many other comforts. Americans tend to not like to speak about this. Having a car in America is such a standard thing in many areas (larger cities with robust community travel services, i.e. trains, bus routes, et cetera are different, understandably) that not having a car when you're 16 is seen as being very poor. Of course, in other parts of the world having a your own private vehicle places you among the elite. Perhaps happiness is out of reach for so many people because the media sets the bar so high. There was a day when someone would be the happiest person in the world just for putting food on the table.
I guess I'm thinking about these things today because I have been working with a co-worker from the other half of the world (literally, 12 hour time difference). Unfortunately I had to have him stay pretty late tonight for his time, and he was teasing me that his fiancé was very angry at me. I told him to be safe going home at this hour, and he said it would be awhile before he could go due to riots, which were primarily incited by "racial" (more so, regional) comments by a politician, that politician's arrest, and the subsequent rioting by that politician's supporters. Apparently 4 of my friend's co-workers in the same office had been, as he put it, "manhandled" by rioters just while trying to get to work.
I guess sometimes we forget how well we have it. We are in the middle of what could be considered a fairly intense election, by our standards, but I cannot see there ever being a night where it is not safe for me to go home.
And no matter how many things I think our government does wrong at times, things like that are still worthy of being thankful for.