Five Days of Grateful

For the past couple of years I’ve been following the numerous Facebook feeds of friends and family. Added to that are the news sites and general interest ads we are bombarded with, like it or not. What has stood out for me is the constant push to publish posters with sayings, quotes, general funny remarks which are sometimes not so funny and stuff that shows their stand in life.

My favourite shared post has been five days of grateful. It’s where you are nominated to share three things you are grateful for in your daily life with friends, family and strangers for a period of five days. Either during that time or on your last posting, you get to nominate three people to pass on the baton so to speak. The reason I love this type of sharing is that it gives an individual a chance to express their own positives in their own words, not borrowed scripts. We constantly search for an appropriate quote from a famous or infamous character of our past to add depth and meaning to what we want to say. Sometimes, simple words spoken from a individual carry more weight.

Going through my positives this week, I felt a theme in my gratefulness. Each day I woke up to the news of war, murder, sickness, death and it made me question my comfy life. The things I take for granted everyday and the family I don’t always appreciate. It made me realise that for some, their gratefulness would be the simple fact of being safe, having their family safe, living another day. I harp on this in my blogs because one man challenged me recently about a posting of a video on Facebook. I was against it as I truly believe we should be careful what we share, especially in fragile times like these where we could innocently inflame a war through posted pictures and videos.

He questioned my background and my reasoning for not standing up and fighting for what’s right instead of sitting quietly in a corner. He was right of course. We all have to make a stand against injustice in this world for it to be stopped. But there is a right way of doing things and a wrong way. I do not support the sharing of graphic violence on media sites in any way. Yes, people need to know what has happened, but they do not need to see children being killed for it to be a reality. We have numbed ourselves to the horrors we watch everywhere because few are brave enough to say, NO! I don’t want to see it to believe it.

There is another way. Whilst the media and social sites spew out the negatives, I feel we can reinforce this world with positives. Sending out messages on why we are grateful, showing the humanitarian work of heroes in war torn areas fighting the battle to keep people alive with next to nothing. Spreading the message of good temperance instead of fuelling hatred and of course, moving our butts to help out through aid or donations of clothing, blankets, etc. Pay it forward in different positive ways. It might not move mountains but it sure as hell beats drumming out vitriolic statements of hate. The media and governments have that nailed!

So if you get a chance, send out your five days of grateful or even better, post them here. I’d love to read them. It might not make a difference to some, but to me, it keeps my world sane!