The first time I heard the phrase “Sounds Like a First World Problem” it struck me like a sledgehammer. Most of my “worries” were pretty far up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I live in a country where the basics, food and shelter et al, can be obtained by most anyone willing to learn a marketable skill and get a job. In a world where hunger and famine still exist, all too many of us in the developed world have an issue with ingesting too much food, not too little. While much remains to be done, medical treatment and healthy life span is the best and longest in human history.
If you are reading this, you are probably on a laptop or a smart phone and most likely you were born or are currently living in the developed world. No matter what your personal circumstances, you are among one of the luckiest groups of people in the world today and in human history. As Warren Buffett so famously put it: simply by being born in the western world, we’ve won the birth lottery and are far better off than most.
It’s easy to lose sight of how truly fortunate we are. In this Thanksgiving season, it would behoove us all to give thanks and adopt an ongoing “Attitude of Gratitude” which in turn, I assure you, results in the “Habit of Happiness”.
Closing Quotes:
“‘Enough’ is a feast.” – Buddhist proverb
“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” – Eckhart Tolle, ‘A New Earth’
“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” – G.K. Chesterton, 1874-1936
“Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” – Charles Dickens, 1812-1870 (stroke at 58)
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier