...it would be borderline insane to be consciously thankful for everything that's good in your life at all times. But all too often we run the risk of the exact opposite insanity: dwelling only on our problems and focusing only on the things we hate.
I was going to call this editorial "A Survival Guide to Planet Earth." You know, some advice for my newborn daughter that she can read when she grows up. Kind of a "don't take any wooden nickels" for the switched on anti-globalist set.
One can imagine the items that would make such a list:
You get the idea. But the other night I received an email from a listener named David. He wrote in to congratulate me on the birth of my second child:
"As you probably know, having two healthy wonderful children makes you the luckiest person in the world. No amount of money could ever replace the gift you just received. If only other people in the world could better understand this, the world would be a far better place."
Less than 24 hours later my best friend messaged me to say that her friend had just miscarried. It was her first pregnancy and she and her partner had been trying for months to conceive.
It's amazing how much we can take for granted. When you're bleary eyed and nearly falling over from exhaustion at three in the morning holding a crying newborn who refuses to go to sleep, it can be easy to forget that right there, swaddled in your arms, is the greatest gift of all: a healthy child.
It's not just the big, important gifts that we take for granted, either. It's everything. Did you wake up this morning thankful that you're in good health? Happy to know that your friends and loved ones are OK? Cheerful at the thought that you have food in the fridge and a roof over your head? Of course not. No one does. And it would be borderline insane to be consciously thankful for everything that's good in your life at all times. But all too often we run the risk of the exact opposite insanity: dwelling only on our problems and focusing only on the things we hate.
This isn't a trivial realization. We are programmed to look out for danger and respond to threats. It's instinctual, and well it should be. We live in a dangerous world and our family line wouldn't have made it this far if there wasn't an eternal vigilance against potential perils.
But always focusing on the threats and dangers can send us off the deep end. Especially when dealing in the doom and gloom that pervades so much of the alternative media, it can be all too easy to dwell on the negative and forget why it is we're fighting for truth and justice in the first place. In fact, it can become difficult to remember that we're fighting for anything at all and just focus on fighting against. Against our enemies. Against the politicians and banksters and globalists and fraudsters and psychopaths. But just like the returning war vet who can't stop fighting the war in his head or the homicide detective who assumes everyone is a murder victim in waiting (or a murderer in waiting), this perspective starts to ruin our appreciation of the world until we forget why it is we even cared in the first place.
Sadly, this isn't some theoretical problem. I get dozens of emails a week from people who are frightened and angry and at their wits' end, asking me how I manage to keep doing this work given all the evil that we are facing. The answer is so simple that I'm not sure it can be taught, only perceived. In short, the answer is that I love my life. I love my family and my friends and watching clouds roll by on a lazy summer afternoon and reading a good book and hearing the sound of my son's laughter and, yes, hearing my daughter's cry. The cry of a healthy, growing newborn. This is why I care. I care because life is worth living, and I see that deep down most people are the same; they just want to enjoy their families and their friends and their time on this planet, too. I'm not fighting against the powers that shouldn't be. I'm fighting for all of those things in the world that are worth saving.
This is all a bit heady and philosophical, so thankfully there is something extremely simple that you can do. Take some time every week to be consciously thankful. It could mean writing a gratitude journal once a week. Or writing thank you notes to people who have helped you out. Or counting your blessings. Or just taking a moment for mental appreciation of those things that you love about your life.
It might sound trivial or unimportant, but it's not. Studies show that people who take time once a week for consciously expressing their gratitude and thankfulness are happier, more optimistic and better able to cope with stress in their lives.
This is the first thing I want to teach my daughter. Not how to hate politicians or the media or the banksters, but how to love what's right under her nose.
Oh, there will be time enough to teach her about history and politics and economics and false flag terror and central banking and depopulation and all the nastiness. But if we want to be able to function at all in this world, first we must learn to appreciate what we have.
I took my daughter for a stroll down the block for the first time today. It was the first time she breathed the spring wind and felt the sun on her face. She cried, and slept, and cried again as my son played with the neighbor's child, the squeals of excitement at their childhood games echoing down the lane.
Today was a good day.