"George W. Bush sits down with his family to Thanksgiving dinner. They sit around the table and start counting their blessings. Then, all of the sudden, Al Gore breaks down the door with his lawyers at his back, pounds his fist down on the table and says..."
...wait for it...
"'I demand a manual recount of your blessings!'"
I thought it was pretty clever.
So, today I was thinking about how I've seemed to be so much luckier than my dad in most things in my life so far. Then I started thinking about how I'm a pretty lucky guy in general. That led me to think that, as a man who esteems himself to be a Christian, I shouldn't consider myself lucky as much as I should consider myself blessed (though you can't totally discount pure happenstance). So, here we go:
- I left my car unattended for three weeks and the only difference in it compared to when I left was a spider web that had been spun on the passenger-side mirror.
- I have a car that's paid for in its entirety and is warrantied bumper-to-bumper for the next 4 years.
- Today, I traveled over 1300 miles in under 12 hours for less than $250.
- Oregon State University pays me $1700 a month (before taxes) to get a master's degree and occasionally grade a few assignments.
- Speaking of Al Gore, I have a blazing-fast internet connection that gives me access to endless concourses of information, both of a factual and social nature.
- Though it may appear to be in decline, I live in a point on the time-space continuum that's among the most prosperous in human history.
- I have a bachelor's degree from a highly-respected institution of higher education.
- My parents cared enough about me to teach me many of the important skills to a prosperous life in this world.
- I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and I have a testimony of the Gospel of Christ.
- I'm pretty smart, but sufficiently humble that I can recognize when people are smarter and/or more knowledgeable than me. (barely)
- Today, I wore a pair of 95-dollar shoes that were made by small children in a sweatshop in China.
- There are still single women who flirt with me every now and then.
- Duct tape.
- Knowledge that God did not abandon us to find our own way and let nature take its course, but continues to reveal the right way through prophets.
- BYU football just wrapped up another 10-win season.
- Despite its flaws and the raging viral infection currently wrecking havoc on my upper respiratory system, my body works pretty well, for the most part.
- I have really good hand-eye coordination. That's why they call me The Hands.
- There are pills you can take that mostly negate the effects of a lack of vegetables in your diet.
- Antiseptic mouthwash does wonders.
- I've had the opportunity to learn another language (mostly) and have been able to keep it bouncing around in my head with relatively little outside practice.
- I can read and write in both languages that I speak.
- There's a postal system that will take some crap that you wrote and, for 42 cents, send it to some random dude in Wyoming within 3 days. (Thank you Jon Stewart)
- People who have come before me have refined the body of knowledge on clay and stone and steel so that I could understand what I do now.
- Someone thought up glasses for vision correction and someone else thought up sunglasses for light dimming.
- I have a telephone that fits in my pocket.
- I have a calculator that also fits in my pocket (kind of) that does calculus and matrix algebra, graphs functions in 2- and 3-space, and adds.
- Drafting erasers for when I royally screw up engineering calculations.
- An outright unhealthy abundance of food.
- Clean drinking water that's piped to a tap in your house, essentially for free.
- A Savior who lived a life that was beyond reproach from God, suffered incomprehensible pain, and died so that I and 15 billion of my closest friends and family can by happy for the rest of eternity.
- And, undoubtedly, many more.
Sounds awesome!
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