If you aren't grateful you might not be around very long here on earth

Gratitude is the motor of life they say. And my life has always proved this to me by the way.

Without Gratitude there appears to be "NO quality of life at all". You might say, "which came first the chicken or the egg?" or maybe better said which came first "Good things or Gratitude?"

I'm not sure how to answer this. However, I can say one thing, "If you don't have gratitude in your life you might not be around very long (or you are going to go through life very very angry until you have a stroke or heart attack).

I find the kinder I am to others the kinder people are to me. So, as people are kind to me I am grateful for that. As I raised my kids I taught them gratitude. Did this always take? Somewhat. Because each person has to find reasons to be grateful in life. What you do good comes back and then you can be grateful over time.

This doesn't mean that life is perfect. In fact I spent my early 20s wanting to off myself even though I was 6 foot 5 and handsome and always had girlfriends. Why?

Because life wasn't exactly the way I wanted it to be. I expected too much like I was promised growing up in California. And I was very very disappointed in many ways. So, I had to force myself to stay alive by helping others who wanted to kill themselves and counseling them. By doing this I also kept myself alive until I was married and had a son of my own. Then I had to give up my very selfish self centered thoughts of suicide so I could raise my son to adulthood as well as my other children as they came along through the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s. So, from 1974 until about 2014 I was always raising at least one or more children under 18 years of age. Now my youngest is 24 and my oldest is 45.

I have always stayed close with all my children and always have been willing to help them in any useful and good way that I could.

So, gratitude really got going because I had very good parents and very wonderful children. This is where my gratitude started and I always had relatively good health too (after I got over whooping cough at 2 and blunt trauma childhood epilepsy from 10 to 15 years of age.

So, if you are grateful for your life and your children and where you live etc. you will extend your life just being grateful for the good things in your life ongoing.

By God's Grace