108 Days of Gratitude - Day 1

Blogblah! has a meditation he does when he finds himself down, and I hope he doesn't mind my sharing it. He uses a Buddhist mala, which is a string of 108 beads similar to a rosary, to count 108 reasons to be thankful. By the time he's reached the 108th bead, he's reminded life isn't as bad as it seems when (like me) we tend to dwell only on the negative.

My plan, since I'm taking some time off from one of my regular space-fillers here, is spend 108 days recounting things for which I can be grateful. Some will be big things and some will be tiny things. Some may even strike you as silly. (Tomorrow, for example, I plan to be grateful for a computer mouse.)

But by the time I'm done, maybe we'll all see that my life isn't as awful as it sounds if you read this blog regularly.

So...

DAY 1

The death last week of Steve Jobs at age 56 reminds us that even with great wealth, power and prestige, health is not something to taken for granted. Jobs was two years younger than me.

I am afflicted with hypertension and an occasional attack of Howling Bowel Syndrome, but other than that, my health seems quite good. I've been hospitalized only twice, and one of those times was following a traffic accident when I was eight.

I am grateful for my good health.