1 EAGLETON NOTES: Thankful Thursday....'I am!'.

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Thursday 4 January 2018

Thankful Thursday....'I am!'.

I was chatting to a dear friend in New Zealand this morning. We were talking, amongst many other things about being alive. She made the point that we are so astonishingly lucky to get a life. "How," she asked rhetorically, "do a bunch of molecules come together...against all the rules of entropy? And call themselves ‘I Am’?"

She keeps a book in which she writes down things for which she is grateful. Tonight she will write ‘I am glad that today I am still alive’.

Over breakfast I kept thinking about that and how I, and probably most of the society in which I live, take for life granted. In fact we take so much for granted. 

Of course my friend was talking on a much higher level about life itself rather than 'our lives'. 

On the 'our lives' level though a very large percentage of the world's population can't take life for granted at all even at the most basic level. We have become aware of that because of television and, ironically, have also become inured to to it. A million or so Rohingya Muslims added to the millions of other war-torn and starving nations hardly makes us even bat an eyelid. Shame on us.

It made me feel very sheepish about feeling irritated that I have had this stinking cold that has kept me from seeing my new Grandchild and about the water in my oil tank that had caused my central heating to fail and the boiler to need new parts. My cold will get better and Bob has just repaired the boiler and my heating is working again. I have my health and I have the money to pay Bob's bill. 

Today I am very thankful for my life (at every level) and for the lives of my friends too.

30 comments:

  1. I would make sure there is a water separator betwixt tank and boiler. Bob may disagree of course.

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    1. I shall have a look at them Adrian. I think Bob would be delighted. He's heartily fed up with water in my tank over the years. I keep forgetting to use waterhogs and at the price they are it would be cheaper to have a separator.

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    2. You can also fit a water drain in the lowest part of the tank and draw fuel oil from a second outlet a few inches above it. Also wait a few hours after filling to let the oil settle out or settle on the muck and water. The water separator will only give you a few hours warning.

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    3. Unfortunately, Adrian, I never know when they are going to come and fill the tank so, in the middle of winter, this does cause a problem if I am out (which I was when they delivered recently). I've just put a water soaker-upper in the tank so, hopefully, if I keep these renewed I should be okay for the time being.

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  2. There have been a few times in my life when I saw my demise as being immanent... within seconds... and then I scrape through unscathed wondering how and why.
    It often appears that some folk seem to take life for granted, though to be honest perhaps they actually do not because we are not walking in their shoes.

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    1. Heron, I have just discovered several of your comments in my spam bin. I've absolutely no idea how that happened. Anyway I have just 'unspammed' them. I think I am fortunate enough not to have been in the situation of feeling that my demise was just upon me.

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  3. What would we do without Bob in our lives? Be a lot colder I suspect. He is an absolute star.

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  4. I have woken to the rain after an excellent nights sleep...and got up early to admire the garden from many windows, plants drinking in the water and everything looking wonderful. I went back to bed with a cup of tea and was already feeling a lot of gratitude for being able to enjoy being on holiday and savour these small things. So now I can add that I am also grateful for being alive to do these. Thank you. I am happy that you are alive too! Hope the cold,passes very soon....

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    1. I'm glad that you are happy, Fi. You deserve to be. I hope this is a very happy year for you. The cold has passed - after nearly two weeks.

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  5. Was he Bob the Builder? I have seen him on TV.

    I look at images of the Rohingya people and of Yemeni children and of Syrian refugees and of Afghani peasants... and I am both grateful and embarrassed to live the way I do. Such good fortune.

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    1. No, YP, he's Bob the Heating Engineer and, fortunately, he lives right opposite to me.

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  6. We take a lot of things for granted until they start to disappear on us. I agree we should remind us each day of how luck we are to be alive, have our health, family and friends...

    Mersad
    Mersad Donko Photography

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    1. We do indeed, Mersad, and I think my generation has lived through the most fortunate of times in this country.

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  7. I so entirely and totally agree with you on this, Graham. The second part of YP's comment could be mine, too.

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    1. If I'm truly honest, Meike, I am not sure that I ever feel embarrassed at how fortunate I am. If I think about it academically I should be, of course.

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  8. Gratefulness abounds! Speaking from amid the drifts of our first blizzard of 2018, I can echo the especial thanks for warmth in our wee cottage. And for a friend like you. The first is warmth from the outside, the second is warmth from the inside. 8-)

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    1. Mrs S you say the kindest things. You make me very humble and very happy and that makes me try even harder to be a good friend.

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  9. I can only agree, too. (And perhaps at some level, even the ability to sometimes be able to take things for granted must be counted a blessing...)

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  10. Living with gratitude is the secret to happiness.
    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-rosenthal/gratitude-the-secret-to-happiness_b_783530.html

    I believe this with all my heart. God bless you, Graham!

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    1. What an excellent article, Kay. Thank you for pointing us in that direction.

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  11. Ahhh....Graham...we're allowed to have our grumbles...because we are the one feeling our own pain...no one else feels our certain discomforts etc., so we're allowed to have a bit of a whinge now and then. :)

    I'll be happy when this humidity we're experiencing dissipates...I've been have a bit of a whinge about it! :)

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    1. Yes, Lee, if we didn't grumble occasionally we wouldn't be human would we?

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  12. I am thankful to be here but I think it's the nature of the beast to take life for granted.

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    1. Well, Red, I suppose we take the good things for granted and grumble about the bad. But, so often, our bad is eclipsed by the bad of others.

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  13. Yes we can always find someone worse off but it is still hard to take when things don't go well for us until we see the big picture.

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    1. Diane I think you've got it in a nutshell (is that a saying in Australia?).

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  14. I seem to have enough gratitude to be happy but I suspect I could have more! Thought provoking post, Graham, thanks.

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    1. I have to say, Kylie, that you always strike me as a positive person.

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