Give some thanks and take a bow

Well, I am going to warn you that this is going to be another one of those inspirational, positivity type posts. Sure we all know that we are very well off comparatively and we should be thankful every day for everything we have. We should put aside our greed and petty ambitions and revel in the now that we are blessed with. We all know this and some of us constantly strive to be that person. And that is the problem. Speaking from personal experience, by projecting your desires on your future self, you are diluting your present being. So knock it off.

I have striven my entire adult life to be this guy instead of That Guy. I wanted nothing more than to bury my failings and shortcomings under a metric ton of desires and personal goals. My philosophy has been that if I played out the "best guy I can be" role long enough, that it would just become habit and the old shitty me would be converted. And to be honest, at first, all it did was hold the darkness at bay. But after awhile, it started to work. Maybe I just needed something to work towards and found a stupid way of doing it. Either way, for any number of reasons, here I am today, and I am thankful for who I am. Even though I am still an ass.

And that is what each of us should be thankful for.

Be thankful that you get to draw breath as You today. Explore the things that make you who you are and revel in their beauty; terrible or otherwise. Sure you should be grateful and appreciative for the folks around you, but to be honest, you should be thanking them the other 364 days of the year in some form or another. There are a lot of great people out there that inspire and support us. It should be up to each of us to find our inner strengths and bolster our self-being enough to become one of them.

So there you go: Love yourself when you can, and do some esteem push-ups when you can't.

Oh, and those are my girls helping me put up ornaments.