We live in a world where we seem to be surrounded by bad news. That leads to us feeling stressed, depressed, threatened, and hopeless about the future. Many people seem to feel that we are living at the end of times, and in a world and society that is terrible to live in. If you feel this way, believe me, you are not alone. However, the problem with this feeling is that firstly it is not true. Secondly, if you feel this way, then it debilitates you and takes away your initiative to do anything. It drains your energy, sabotages your ambition, and increases your anxiety to potentially dangerous levels. Allah told us to be grateful and warned those who are not, to beware of His punishment. Gratitude is energizing, joyful, encouraging, and very powerful. Ingratitude is the opposite on all these counts. The question is, what should we be grateful for? Let me help you with facts.

When I was growing up from 1950’s to 1980’s,  we didn’t have a refrigerator, gas, or electric stove. Food was cooked on firewood or coal in a smoky kitchen or outdoors. We routinely had no electricity for many hours a day and so no lights or fans. We had no central heating or air conditioning, one car. Nobody had ‘cars’, even one was a rarity. No TV. What was on your lap was not a computer. Go wash out your brain. Phones were not smart, people were. We wrote letters by hand, licked the stamp, stuck it on the envelope, posted it and counted the days until the postman brought us a reply. We had malaria, cholera and typhoid, polio, and tuberculosis. Later we got chikungunya, and dengue. We always had the flu and when the doctors didn’t know what we had, they called it, ‘viral fever’. Today, malaria and poliomyelitis have been eradicated. The others remain. I can add to this list, and there are many here who will bear witness with me and thank Allah that we can talk about those days and smile.

Today with air-conditioning, antibiotics, painkillers, glasses and LASIX surgery for sight correction, cataract and bypass surgery, medical diagnostic equipment and advanced pathology, sneakers, thermal underwear, and jackets, eating out, non-seasonal fruits, treadmills, central heating, indoor flushing toilets, hot and cold water on tap, we, ordinary people, are better off and more comfortable than the wealthiest kings and queens of the past. Add to this that today our children routinely go to school, are literate and many go on to higher education. In Medieval Europe 99% of people couldn’t write their names and that included most kings and queens. We live in countries where the only thing limiting your material growth, learning and career advancement is yourself. Anyone willing to make the effort can get to the top. See who are the people heading major corporations whose turnover is more than the GDP of many countries. Not a single one is a hereditary monarch or noble. There was a time, not too long ago where if you were not born into the right family, your fate was sealed. Today, your present situation doesn’t decide if you will succeed or fail. It only defines where you need to start. If you have ambition, determination, seek feedback, are willing to learn, sleep less and work hard, nothing but death can stop you.

Despite all this, we enjoyed life enormously and have wonderful memories, not because we had stuff, but because we had attitude. An attitude of gratitude. That was inculcated into us from the earliest and that is what is most necessary in the way we raise children today. Teach them to value people and use stuff. Not the other way around. Thankfulness is the open secret of happiness. So, while we look at all that is ‘wrong’ with society, let’s reflect on what is right. There is far more that’s right than what’s wrong.

Let’s continue. Today our major preoccupation is Covid, right? Let us put that also in perspective.