Gratitude

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), the foundress of modern nursing, once said that everything that is worth something in our life, was given to us for free – our brain, our soul, our body, our hopes, our intelligence, our love for our family, our friends, our country. But truly, how grateful are we to all this? Sometimes you find people who, besides ignoring their blessings, complain about what they don’t have! So try to remember what you have instead of lamenting on what you don’t own. An elderly blind woman once told the priest who visited her for communion, ‘Father, I am grateful to God that even though I cannot see, at least I can hear. Because, even though blindness cut me off from material things, the fact that I can hear, at least I know I am surrounded by friends, and I can always talk with them.’