I often have to remind myself to adopt an “attitude of gratitude” yet last Friday gratitude washed over me like a gentle river. These were my thoughts:

I wear glasses. What if I had to – somehow – invent glasses, then manufacture the lenses and the frames in order to see?

What if I had to pave the road before I went any place? Or invent a car? Or a bicycle? Or mold tires?

What if I had to grow all my own food before I could eat?

Or when I want to make a batch of cookies, what if I had no tried-and-true recipe book?

What if I had to churn the butter, gather the eggs, grind the flour, distill the vanilla, make the baking powder, cobble together an oven, mold a pan, find a source of energy, and go to the river for water?

The answer, of course, is that I’d have to do without. A cornucopia of wonders that I just take for granted wouldn’t exist.  [Read more →]