Columbus Day.

Its Columbus Day and I have the day off from school. Yay! But, because I am an awful procrastinator, (or a good one, depending on how you look at it) I have a lot of homework to get done. :( That can wait though...my classes aren't till tomorrow, and tomorrow is so far off in the future, why worry about things that happen then? I might not even live till tomorrow, and how lame would it be if I spent my last day on earth slaving away at physics?...A small sample of my procrastinating powers. ;)

Anyway. Yesterday at church, our pastor was talking about how lucky and blessed we are to be Americans. At first I was thinking, " Blessed? What are you thinking? America is a total train wreck, we're in awful shape, and here you are saying that its a blessing to live here." But upon reflection I realized that how right he was. We Americans complain so much about how awful things are that we have forgotten about all our blessings.

And there are so many. All I have to do to see how blessed we Americans are, is drive 3 and 1/2 hours south to Tijuana, Mexico. There the majority of people live in homemade shacks and if they are "lucky" enough to have a "real" job are paid next to nothing working long hours in awful conditions. But the living conditions are not even the worst of. In this city of 1.3 million people, the people that are in charge are not the government, but the Drug cartels. I wont get into all the details about the cartels because they are awful and you probably know them. All this awfulness and Mexico is by far not the worst place to live in the world.

We all know somewhat of the horrendous conditions our fellow human beings have to endure, yet we have the nerve to complain about our economy and the shape that America is in. We are truly spoiled. We complain nonstop about our government, when some countries are being terrorized by evil dictators, and others have no real government at all and there is utter chaos. I'm not saying we're in good shape, but we're a heckava lot better off than most and we have lots to be grateful for.

If you think about it, you could just as well have been born into a family that has nothing and that lives on the streets of Calcutta. But you weren't. God put you in a place much, much better than that. (I know that because you have to have a computer to be reading this.) So no matter where you are in live, or how bad things seem, you still hove a lot to be thankful for. And, if you happen to be having a rough time of it right now, you might find that if you concentrate on the blessings rather than the negatives, thing will get better.

So, to sum up: BE GRATEFUL!!!!!!!!

Ok. I feel really preachy right now, but it made me think about stuffs that I think lots of us need to think about more.

-Thomas who is probably going to do a triathlon post later today...stay tuned.