50 questions that free your mind: No. 25

As part of my Day Zero Project, I will be answering the 50 Questions That Free Your Mind. For each of these, I will blog an answer and then it will be linked here as well. Some of these will have longer responses, some will be extremely short. But by the end of the Day Zero Project, I will have answered all of these.

No. 25: What are you most grateful for?

Breathing.

I actually conemplated leaving the full post as the one-word answer, but I thought I should probably expand on it.

See, I’m grateful for breathing because it means I’m alive. And that, to me, is a good thing.

I often use one answer when people ask me “How are you doing?” That answer? “I’m breathing.”

I’ll use different ways of saying it — things like “I woke up on this side of the dirt” or “I didn’t see my name in the obits.” But, often, it’s just the “I’m still breathing.”

Life can suck. There’s no doubt about it.

My world isn’t great right now, as I’ve blogged about in the past. The employment world seems to be blocking me out, I’m not as active as I should be and I’m not in a situation I’m terribly happy about now.

But I’m breathing.

There are far worse alternatives.

Live is funny. It’ll throw you those awful pitches and you have to decide what to do with them. I’m trying and trying and trying to improve things. One day, it will happen. It has to. I’ll eventually look back on all of this and know I am stronger because of it. I can’d say all the feelings I’ve built toward some things and people will ever go away, but in the end, I’ll be stronger and better.

If I wasn’t breathing, that wouldn’t be possible.

I think of all the people who have it worse than me — and I don’t mean because of economics. Those who battle diseases. Those who have disabilities. Those who need help just to breathe. And I know, despite where I am in this world right now, it isn’t so bad.

So I’m grateful for a lot of things. But without one thing, everything else wouldn’t be possible.

Breathing.