Happy Thanksgiving

One of my great girlfriends always says, “if we all traded problems with someone else, we’d be fighting to get our own back.  It could always be worse”.

And she is so right.

Fact:  One in every nine people on our planet go to bed hungry each night (http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/en/)

Fact:  Nearly 1/2 of the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty, that’s less than $1.25 a day. (https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-global-poverty)

Fact:  More than 1 billion people lack adequate access to clean drinking water and an estimated 400 million of these are children. Because unclean water yields illness, roughly 443 million school days are missed every year. ((https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-global-poverty))

Fact:  Every year more than 3 million reports of child abuse are made in the United States involving more than 6 million children (a report can include multiple children). (http://www.childhelp.org/pages/statistics

Fact:  Globally, as many as 38% of murders of women are committed by an intimate partner. (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs239/en/)

Fact:  One in 3 women worldwide is a victim of physical or sexual violence (World Health Organization)

Fact:  One in 3 black males will go to prison in their lifetime (Huffington Post/Bureau of Justice Statistics) and once convicted African-Americans tend to receive longer sentences than their caucasian counterparts.

Fact:  While caucasian women are more likely to have breast cancer, African-American women have higher overall mortality rates from best cancer, averaging 5 African-American women per day (AmericanProgress.org)

Fact:  African-American women represent 65% of new AIDS diagnoses amount women (AmericaProgress.org) and HIV/AIDS continues to be a leading cause of death in America (World Health Organization)

FACT:  THERE ARE WAY TOO MANY FACTS IN THE WORLD TO LIST HERE.

As I was doing research for this blog post, I was overwhelmed with just how many “facts” there are in the world. For the sake of keeping this article short, I only included some facts that I found relevant to my own life and the environment I live in.  Maybe you fit into one of the fact categories above.  Maybe you don’t.

Regardless, truly think about your life.  Is it the absolute, completely worse life there is or are there some other “facts” out there that you are grateful you don’t have to experience.  Yes, I know your life has had its share of trials and tribulations and has not always been the easiest life but truly look back over your life and find those moments, those events, those people, those things for which you can be thankful for. As they say in Peter Pan, find that one happy thought.  In the midst of so many tumultuous thoughts and events in your life, there has to be at least one happy thought for which you can be thankful.

You see the act of thanksgiving isn’t about all the food and social gatherings (though they are fun). The act of thanksgiving should be a reflection over your life and reverence and honor to God for all the things that he has blessed you with.

What are you thankful for on today?

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

~VDavis