I like this statement a lot!

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” – Marcel Proust 

I like this statement because it makes me think of my Mother and my grandmother (her mother) they were both of Scottish descent. My mother's father and mother were both raised in Scotland after family tragedies happened so they had to return to Scotland to grow up from Boston and Philadelphia. But, then my grandparents married over in Scotland and returned to America with many of my grandmother's brothers and sisters.

So, I am Grateful for all the people in my life that made me happy along the way.

I think maybe you feel the same way. However, most of the people who made me happy are gone now from the 1950s and 1960s when I was growing up. 

However, I still have one cousin in his 80s now who has been like a brother to me and we started sailing in his then new Columbia 22 Sailboat to Catalina in 1968 when he graduated Law School in New York and returned to California to be a lawyer in Southern California ever since. we sailed his boat out of Marina Del Rey then and within a year he met his wife who had been a nun and decided she wanted to raise a family instead. However, she was the principle of a Catholic High School until she retired too.  They have 3 children and 9 grandchildren so far.

I'm grateful for my mother and my Scottish Grandmother because they mostly raised me as my father worked a lot as first an electrician and then as an Electrical Contractor while I was a teenager. I worked with him summers and weekends with him in his business which enabled me to start buying Mini-bikes (motorized small motorcycle) and my first car for 800 dollars when I was 16 years old one month after I turned 16.

My father was very intelligent but sometimes wanted to "toughen me up" in the old traditions. Like at age 5 he gave me an olive off a tree and said "Taste this it's wonderful!" And I had no water to wash the extremely bitter taste out of my mouth from an untreated somewhat poisonous Olive just off a tree. So, I spit it out and wondered why my father was doing this. However, now as a man I see he was just telling me: "You can't really trust anyone in this world!"

So, this was important too.

So, as a result I tend not to trust any man very much but I'm pretty good with women who seem to be much more likely to be moral in their actions then men are.

So, unless a woman is crazy (as many are just like men) they often are much more trustworthy than men are.

Knowing this is one way to stay alive here on earth.

So, the people that make us happy like relatives and friends and often our children and Grandchildren are what keep most of us alive into old age.

Otherwise, often what is the point really? 

You often notice people with Children and Grandchildren are alive into their 100s. 

This I notice a lot now that I'm 78 years old!