I believe that most of us belong somewhere in the middle of this bell curve, which approximates how fortunate (in terms of many factors) people are. On one extreme are people who were born in extreme poverty without basic necessities, or with crippling physical and mental disabilities or during times of warfare and crisis or belonging to races/regions with extreme discrimination and injustice or have unfortunately undergone negative and life changing tragedies. On the other hand are the fortunate, with extreme amounts of wealth, health, freedom, luck, etc.. While most of us belong somewhere in the middle, we often question why are we not fortunate enough to be born in the richest, socially elite and forget than while belonging to the normal also means not belonging to the negative side.

Normal_Distribution

My hypothesis on how fortunate we are. X-axis: How fortunate we are. Y-axis: Population. Image by D Wells, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

This post is a reminder that while it’s not perfect, we should be grateful of being fortunate enough of not belonging to the extreme negative side. Let’s be grateful of our basic needs being fulfilled, of having access to food, clean water and shelter. Let’s be grateful to be born during such prosperous times with little conflicts and epidemics (except Covid-19). Let’s be grateful for having people who love and care for us, for the sacrifices many have suffered for our freedom and liberty to be who we want to be, to learn what we want to learn with access to unprecedented amount of knowledge the world has gathered for us and being able to live in the wonderful times where our personal freedoms are respected, where practicing equality is promoted and spreading of discrimination and hate is frowned upon. Let’s be grateful for being physically and mentally healthy without major disabilities and immediate access to world class healthcare and to not have undergone life crippling accidents/tragedies. Let’s be grateful for the world changing innovations happening in all fields every day. Let’s be grateful for this beautiful normal life.