05 November 2013

On Thankfulness

I'm not thankful for anything.

There are a lot of good things about my life. I am where I am today for many reasons. Some of them were from actions taken by individual other people, and I am grateful to them for the specific things that they did for me.

But gratitude in general for being alive and well?

The choices I made along my life path, that have led me here, were my own. The luck I've had has been both good and bad. There was not some fundamental sentient force that has caused my good fortune, to which I owe anything. And I resent the implication, in the whole concept of thankfulness, that I should believe that there is.


3 comments:

Tom said...

Well, I'm thankful you finally started updating your damn blog again! :)

Very good to hear from you, no matter what opinions you espouse.

MWT said...

Heh hi Tom. I'll see if I can post more often. Mostly depends on whether I have anything interesting to say.

I just think "thankful" is entirely the wrong word to describe how I feel about how lucky I am in life. Gratitude is something you owe, and I don't feel like I owe anything.

Tom said...

Thankful's one of them multi-purpose words. I'm thankful for the help I got to get out of the drug and alcohol trap I was in 22 years ago, where I kinda do owe the helping lady an awful lot. And I'm thankful that I made it through drugs and alcohol to where I am now, for which I'm not sure I owe anyone but me.

I do know you don't owe me for my being thankful you're back blogging, and I don't owe you. But I take your meaning, and if you don't want to use "thankful" the way someone else does, I'm down with that.