Gratitude, Opportunity, and Christmas

Life is good!!

Do you ever have those days when you're just really happy? I love those days! I had a day like that today - nothing out of the ordinary happened. I was just thinking about Christmas coming and having a wide open couple of weeks ahead of me. I also thought about the following:

*How glad I am the Aztecs took some weird pods off trees, broke them open and figured out how to make chocolate from the seeds inside
*How lucky I am to have work that I love
*How lucky I am that Jenny Prevatte made and sent me fudge and Mike Marley made and sent me brownies; and Carl Weaver brought me candy when he came to Raleigh for Thanksgiving
*How lucky am I to have so many good friends
*How lucky am I to have my health
*How lucky am I to have great clients
*How lucky am I to have my freedom

What about you? What are you grateful for?

Let me get you thinking - do you have children? are they healthy?
Are you married or is there someone in your life you love and who loves you?
Do you have a pet who worships you or that you worship?
Do you have a job?
Can you see? Hear? Walk?
Do you believe in yourself? In a higher power? In the future?
Do you have some Christmas cookies?

When I start thinking about all I have to be grateful for, it never fails to make me happy. This is the season to give thanks - no matter what your religion. It's the end of one year and the beginning of another.

Here's a poem by Walter Malone that I like:

Opportunity

They do me wrong who say I come no more
When once I knock and fail to find you in;
For every day I stand outside your door,
And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win.
Wail not for precious chances passed away,
Weep not for golden ages on the wane!
Each night I burn the records of the day-
At sunrise every soul is born again!

Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped,
To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;
My judgements seal the dead past with its dead,
But never bind a moment yet to come.

How appropriate is THAT?

The year before us is filled with opportunity - how lucky are we?

So be grateful for everything you have, everyone who loves you, and all the opportunity before you. (And that Santa Claus is coming!!!!)