Secret to a happy, contented life...

"There is always something to be thankful for..."

Flowers trigger the feelings of thankfulness in me, for some reason. Perhaps it is related to the concept of offering flowers to God in the Hindu religion as a measure of showing our thankfulness to God for all his grace. Perhaps it is just a feeling of joy triggered in me, being thankful for another lovely morning with such beauty around me.

I do not know the real reason but I do not care. What matters is I see and capture the beauty of such flowers and preserve it in my digital world forever with the help of my Nikon P900 camera. This is the picture I took this morning...

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The feeling of thankfulness is hand in hand today with my grief because of the loss of a beloved family member.
I am thankful that I have had plenty of time during last two years (due to my stepping back and taking partial retirement) to have a wonderful time with family and know that those memories will stay forever with us.

However, it is not that aspect alone that I am thankful for. Here are 3 unusual aspects that I am thankful for.

Thankful for the struggle

The journey of life so far has not always been smooth for me. I know, many of you can also say that. By the grace of God and with the efforts put in by my parents, I have had a fairly normal childhood where my life was fairly protected.

However, then onward, I faced some things in life that tested my very mettle. At the young age of 22, I had a very difficult job and faced situations involving threat to life, sabotage, hatred. I was often stuck in a mob of angry violent protesters.

Struggle was a daily part of my life for years...

I faced heart wrenching situations where families literally begged me to discipline the main bread earner of the family because he did not take care of the family. I saw poverty, cheating and injustice everywhere I turned.

I saw the dredges of humanity in my travels. It was not easy living that life. However, I am proud to say that, instead of becoming a coward and ignoring things, all my strength came to surface with a lot of vigor and I was able to address most of the situations. Helping people was no big philanthropic exercise for me but it felt like my duty instead.

I am thankful for all the struggle in my life!

Thankful for what I have

As I was growing up, we had a scooter, a 150 cc old Vespa that my father had bought the year I was born. It was as old as me and was perhaps not so pretty to look at. It was the one thing that was our prized possession and we did everything, including overhauling it ourselves at home.

I used to feel bad about our ride once in a while till that fateful day when one of my friends told me that he used to walk 10 KMs to his previous school - every day - as a kid!!

Hmmm... Who was I to complain when I at least had a trusty old ride.

That day onward, I have been thankful for what I have and making more money has never been the part of my plans for my life.

This does not mean I am not ambitious. I worked hard to keep doing new, different and difficult things in life but none of that was only for making more money. At every stage in life, my wife, son and I have been always happy with what we have. The ambition has always been to test ourselves and achieve more.

Money seemed to be a byproduct!!

For me, the old Vespa scooter is symbolic of 'being happy for what we have'.

Thankful for my weird friends

Yes I have a few weird friends. I have NOTHING in common with them except for the fact that we meet and find something to do that we enjoy.

They have hugely different backgrounds, upbringing and financial status. They are not from my school or college. Nor do I have any business connections with them.

By worldly standards, calling them quirky is a kindness! Sometimes, they are outright mad I think. However, being with them gives me a sense of being free, out of the box and allows me to be creative without inhibition.

I am thankful to those weird bastards (as I fondly call them )

I am really thankful to all of you too - for putting up with me, my whims and my eccentric posts. You perhaps fall in the last category of what I am thankful for that I have listed above. You all, on the other hand - I am sure, you are really thankful on the days when I do not post. LOL.

In Conclusion:

Don't always worry about money in the bank - there is a lot in the world to thank

Steemians, please comment freely to share your experiences, knowledge and views about what YOU are thankful for. Thanks.

Note: All images except for the wildlife photos and the title image created by me are from pixabay.com. Image credit has been specifically mentioned for images not falling under these two categories.

Gif crafted by the Legendary @stellabelle for me based on my Lion Avatar