s we enter into this Thanksgiving Season, it is important to gather with family and friends and hug them especially hard, hold them ever so endearingly, and embrace the good fortune – no matter large or small - that we have.
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It is easy to let our thoughts be consumed by concerns about reduced economic security, rising health care, energy or food costs, and other worries about the future. It takes more effort to focus, instead, on being grateful for what we have. Until Harvey, Irma, and Maria hit America’s shores, these issues seemed inevitable, but manageable. Then with gale force winds, water, and devastation unknown to Americans previously, it changed lives forever for those in Texas, Florida, Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. Sadly, those who hunkered down on August 28, September 14, and September 20 endured the process of fear, panic, and heartbreak. Regretfully, the trails of devastation are not all going to be resolved and brought back to normalcy, just as a trail of years ahead to a long recovery.
Comments From Hurricane Survivors . . .
We must try to live life to the fullest each day and not let terror or tragedy paralyze us; stopping us from doing the things we love most with the people we love most. “My house was completely gone. I knelt down on my slab and said out loud, ‘I am so grateful that the people I love have lived.’ And I cried. I had 20 good years in that house, and I feel fortunate.”
“All around me, people had died. I watched them pull the bodies of a whole family out of the mud
near my house. Why hadn’t they evacuated? Did they not have enough money for gas? Even if they hadn’t, they could have gone to a shelter!” “My street looks like a picture of Chernobyl after the nuclear blast. It’s all brown, clothes are hanging from trees and debris is everywhere. Brown, nasty water is seeping out of the ground.”
“The looters arrived early, crawling over the debris like rats – and it wasn’t stuff for survival, either. In the past, disasters in this part of the country have brought out the best in people. But not this time.”
“After I went to Sunday mass in my old church – which was still standing – I decided it was time to stop digging in the mud and start rebuilding my life. Whatever’s left of mine, the earth can have it back – I don’t need it.”
“It was as if a 50 to 60-mile-wide tornado raged across Puerto Rico, like a buzz saw,” Jeff Weber, a meteorologist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, says. “It’s almost as strong as a hurricane can get in a direct hit.”
When we look at how the men and women in these recent tragedies came together, strangers reached out and helped strangers. People traveled miles to assist with water vessels, rescue equipment, food and water,
and many basic necessities to human survival, albeit, greater than those listed in the first paragraph.
We have so much to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. These recent events, including the most horrific event in Las Vegas, are to remind us of what truly is important in life and how we must never take anything or anyone for granted.
We must try to live life to the fullest each day and not let terror or tragedy paralyze us; stopping us from doing the things we love most with the people we love most.
The Happy Heart - Be Grateful
We all know the old adage: count your blessings not your sorrows. Science has now proven that heeding the wisdom in this worn-out saying produces tangible physical and emotional benefits. A leading expert on the psychology of gratitude, reports that “experiencing anger, frustration, anxiety, and insecurity causes our heart rhythms to become incoherent or jagged, interfering with the communication between the heart and the brain. It causes our hearts to function in a less efficient manner. This is a hefty price to pay for worrying about the future.
2017 NOVEMBER i TEXAS LONGHORN JOURNAL 53
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