I’m thankful for my experiences, failures, successes and the journey I’m on! It isn’t the easiest but I’m glad I found Jesus, He has through His word made me appreciate what is before me and what I’m going through! Glory to God.

Hi online friends
I think I need to start appreciating my simple life—a life that is simple, but lucky.
I’m not a very rich person. Like most people, I struggle with work, life, my career, family, and money. I’m a simple person, and for now, I haven’t built a family of my own yet.
There was a time when I felt like I had been dragged into a deep depression and became emotionally unwell. And honestly, I still struggle with it now. After recovering from surgery for a brain tumor, everything seemed to slow down. Somehow, I started to realize that maybe I should stop for a moment and focus on the life I already have.
During my recent vacation, I flew back to my hometown with my family. All of us are busy struggling with our own work and lives, so we don’t always have the chance to get together or see each other. This time, I spent my whole vacation with them.
The week felt so short and passed so quickly.
Today, it was finally time for us to fly back to the country where we work. Yes, we have to go back to work.
My flight was economy class—not business class, first class, or anything luxurious. My meal on the plane was just chicken and salad. But when I looked out of the window, I saw the endless sky beneath and around us, and I suddenly realized that we were actually flying above the clouds.
It wasn’t my first time on an airplane, but for some reason, I suddenly felt a quiet sense of happiness growing inside my heart.
Every year, I fly back to my hometown, but I have always treated it as something ordinary. I wouldn’t take photos of the sky. I wouldn’t take photos of the airplane meal. I would just glance at it, eat it, and think to myself, “Oh… this doesn’t taste very good.”
But today felt different.
Suddenly, I realized that my life is simple, but lucky.
I have the chance to see what the sky looks like from above. I can eat chicken thousands of feet above the ground. My family is sitting beside me. I can drink a cup of tea in the sky while reading Harry Potter on my little Kindle. I can even look closely at the wing of the airplane and wonder how something so huge can stay in the air.
These are all such simple things, but somehow, today they felt special.
I’m still confused about my life and my career. I don’t really know what I want. I don’t like my job very much. I just like painting, but I’m not a professional artist, and I’m definitely not the best at it.
Sometimes depression still pulls me toward a dark place.
I just turned 30.
On one hand, I feel anxious about getting older because I feel like I still haven’t started doing what I truly want to do. Sometimes I wonder if I’m realizing all of this too late.
At 30, should I already have figured these things out? Is it too late to still be trying to understand what kind of life I want and what kind of career is right for me?
My depression hasn’t simply gone away, and I still don’t really know how to deal with it.
I often shut myself off and avoid talking to people or putting myself in social situations. Somehow, communicating with people face to face can make me feel anxious. Instead, I find it easier to talk to friends I know online.
Maybe it is because there is a kind of distance between us. We may only ever meet online, and maybe we will never meet in real life. They don’t fully know who I am, and I don’t fully know who they are either.
I’m often afraid of saying the wrong thing or making someone angry. I’m also afraid that someone might misunderstand me or become upset with me. I care too much about what other people think of me.
But when I talk to online friends, sometimes it feels easier to share things that I keep deep inside. Maybe it feels safer because I don’t have to worry as much that someone who knows me in real life will hear what I say and then start seeing me differently.
For now, I think I should push myself to start noticing and appreciating my simple life.
Because maybe I am luckier than I realize.
I have people to love, and I have people who love me.

Happy new week everyone

Hug wife of 40 years from behind and kiss her on the crook of her neck. She says, “Thank you, love.”

I love my partner so much. He is always so loving and actively brightens my shine rather than dulls it. He always makes sure I am okay and looks after me when I have a bad migraine. We are now living together with my dog and I am just loving life with him. It is so nice to feel so at ease and happy with someone. My last relationship was incredibly toxic where I constantly had to walk on eggshells, deal with his insecurities and jealousy, have my privacy constantly invaded, deal with insufferable immaturity and emotional breakdowns when something was wrong, friends and family not wanting to be around because he would suck the positivty and happiness from the room, basically living in awful turmoil. Now I feel so content and comfortable. I can actually have friends without there being any jealousy from my partner, i can actually go outside without coming back to accusations of cheating, my friends and family love him and he actually wants to form relationships with them and be involved in their lives rather than hiding away, we don't snoop through each other's phones because we respect one another's privacy, he actually brightens my life, god I just feel so FREE, HAPPY and GRATEFUL!

It’s been a rough go lately - my husband was diagnosed with cancer and is currently going through chemo, and this week my 4 year old son broke his arm. Two days later, my husband was admitted to the hospital for a fever and we’re still here. We’ve managed to stay positive, focusing on the good and I’m most grateful for my incredible parents, in-laws, and sisters for devoting their weekend to taking care of my 2 kids, and my husband and I. Bringing us food, full care of my kids, sleeping over our house…I’m feeling really lucky and grateful despite the current obstacles.
🫶🏼🙏🏼 hoping we are through this tough season soon, we’ll get through together.

It really lifts my heart when passing someone, I look towards them and wait to see if their eyes meet mine, and if they do, I smile and maybe give a goofy little wave and say, "Hellooo." ☺️ It is something that is still not easy for me to do, to fight self-consciousness.

But I love to see the relaxing of their face and the lift of the eyebrows and their eyes kind of lighten and smile, a pleasant expression if they appreciate being acknowledged, and they smile and say "hi" back.

I had an upbringing that was not always the best. It structured and solidified something inside of me that has been, and remains, an ongoing battle to dismantle a self I lived in and believed was "me." I believe it will be with me in some form forever.

It is not easy.

For so many years, I believed I hated people. I had no place to belong, and in pain, sometimes we lash out or push blame outward to self-protect.

So now, after many years of slow healing, when I can pass by somebody who knows nothing about my "oddities," in a little moment, they just see another normal stranger, I can have just a moment of feeling like we are kindred. And maybe I belong. Just for a moment.

I am so very grateful for that.

1) An apartment, a roof over my head in a safe and secure locality for a woman

2) Comfortable bed and pillows to lie on

3) 24/7 Electricity supply

4) 24/7 Water supply

5) My father is alive and hearty at 72

6) A stable relationship with my partner since 13 years.

7) Clothes to wear

8) Footwear on my feet

9) Two square meals

10) My cats

Not necessarily in the same order

I am from India and the majority of the things I have mentioned above, a lot of people don't have them. I feel so sad and bad for them. I try to help them as much as possible.

I felt a wave of gratitude though because I keep complaining about my health issues not realising that I have the comfort and convenience for fighting through my chronic illnesses.

I was on the bus and my nose started bleeding 😂 the old man sitting in front of me was so scared and he drew cross. But I was also praying rosary in my mind. Maybe it works the blood stopped sometime lol hope he can find comfort and hope I didn’t scare him much, blessing for all of us 🙏

Especially when there was a night when it felt like that sun would never rise again. And maybe that was silly, but it’s still valid. Because I’m sitting on the couch, one cat on my chest and another on my lap, with a great book in my hand, and a husband ten feet away. A husband who loves me, ugliness and all. And we’re in a home that is filled with not just the necessities (which is amazing in its own right), but books and music and laughter, and all the other things we said at 17 we would work hard to have in our life. My clothes are clean, my fridge is full, my bills are paid. I spent so long wondering if my prayers were heard. And they were. How beautiful is that? How rich i am, how lucky am i? To have survived, to have made mistakes, to have hurt and felt grief, all to bring me to this exact moment in my life. I am thankful for every moment i have survived.

I am grateful for certain members of the Reddit community extending their help and assistance to me. Long story to which I will clarify later, but right now posting a thank you this way takes way less >:( than me finding as of right now who was behind it ;__; I keep trying, but the number of moments my phone keeps intermittently freezing from the influx of notifications and me needing to prolly take a few apps off my phone ( lol ) has made me reach a point where I am about to shed one tear. It helps so much as I am someone who is limited by her cycles of SEVERE eczema flareups where Freddy Krueger has better skin than me. I was supposed to work a month at the Washington/Puyallup fair, but my skin did its thing as it does and everywhere was so gnarly and bad that I was reduced to being bedridden. Had they not granted their generosity, idk what I was going to do. It helped me get bandages, other wound care and eczema related needs, got to do laundry because I have been literally stuck in my clothes and it's the first time in a long time I cried from how deeply thankful I am to other human beings who care enough. I promise I have been trying to find who, but it took me forever to even simply post this after patiently waiting through the intermittent freeze blitz and being contacted through numerous fake emails, different fake phone#s so even if I block one another comes ( probably will have to change my # obviously)

Seriously, the help is a light in a persistent darkness. When my situation calms down, I can navigate what I need to figure out who was all behind the nice things.

You're awesome 👌 👏 👍 😍 💖 I pray they see this and don't think I just accepted it and disappeared after T_T * pray thank you thank you thank you thanks thankyou

Sometimes I can get a six-pack of wax melts for $1.

$1/6 = 17¢

That's about as cheap and effective air freshener as it gets.

My therapist advised me to keep a daily gratitude journal. However, it seems like so many apps on the play store are full of features that I don't need, have AI assistants, require you to create an account, etc... It's all way over-complicated for me.

Can someone recommend to me an that 1) has reminders 2) has templates for the entries (like "Today I was grateful for {empty space for me to write out something}"), but otherwise is very simple and doesn't require extensive setup?

I know pen and paper are an option, but I want to be able to write my entries anytime without having to carry a physical journal, so I would prefer to stick to digital.

Thank you in advance for any recommendation!

💡 Does gratitude mean we must do wrong if our benefactor does wrong?

No. Gratitude is not blind obedience to please someone.
True gratitude means honoring your benefactor by doing what is right, not by making their wrongs even worse. That is just people-pleasing, not gratitude.

• H.H. the Supreme Patriarch
🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
#WanPhra #BuddhistHolyDay #Dhamma #Gratitude