These Things Before Me

Thank you for this bed; this carpet; this table; this fan; this glass of water; this pen and paper; this bathroom; this cell phone; this window; this air. All these things are privileges. Nothing earns me the right to have them. I have done nothing to deserve them. I do not know a day of hard labor. I don't know what it's like to be separated from my family. I know no great suffering and, yet, here they are: my bed; my glass of clean drinking water sitting beside me. Here are all these things I don't deserve. For that I am grateful. I am grateful to have a place to sleep, water to drink, air to breathe; my life. Thank you for this and an infinite amount more; for things I haven't written because they don't even occur to me because you don't know what you have until it's taken away. Thank you for opening my mind. May I never cease being grateful.