Roy Exum
Here we are, two days this side of Thanksgiving, and to read or watch the news, there ain’t a lot of things going on around us where gratitude, and the art of sincere thanks, are most prominent in our view. As a matter of fact, it may be that never has it been as lacking. Monday afternoon I watched a video on the news channels that showed New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and his wife, Beth, sitting with their four children in a restaurant over the weekend, quietly enjoying a meal and spending time with one another.
Each had temporarily removed their masks – please, they were eating – and hardly deserved the profanity-laced verbal assault of two or three women who suddenly and loudly assaulted the family.
Admittedly, Governor Murphy is a liberal who has light regard for real-time reality in the opinions of many. Last week he tightened COVID rules to the extent a good number of in-state lawmen announced they would not enforce what they and many New Jersey citizens feel is an over-reach of police authority. That notwithstanding, the overwhelming public sentiment is that even the new and rigid regulations gives no one the right to call the governor a vile name when surrounded by his family in an outdoor dining area, or tell his oldest son “---- you!” during a family meal.
Governor Murphy and his family did not respond, not in kind, to the tirade, but later Governor Murphy said that with 14,960 in-state deaths, and another 1,812 with a probable link, “this is no time to be turning on one another.” The governor said he had never witnessed the nation under more stress, leaving New Jersey survivors “without a family member that was with them last year” as they mark the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday.
“I don’t condone out-of-bounds behavior, but I’m a big boy and I think I speak for my wife, but let’s leave my family out of this,” Governor Murphy said. The nation, he added, was facing more stress “than I think any of us have ever seen.”
Add this week’s riots in California, Nebraska, Washington (both the state and D.C.), Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee (200 in Nashville), Georgia and Florida and stir in the angst surrounding the last breaths of the Trump campaign … and you’ll find, again, that thankfulness and brotherly love are not in abundance.
So, humor me. Let’s go to a revealing set of world statistics I just received in a slide presentation from one of my internet sources that will share why Americans should never fail to be grateful in the big scheme of things. We are two days from Thanksgiving and need to prepare our hearts once again "for the least of them” who share our past.…
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WHAT IF WE BOILED THE WORLD DOWN TO JUST 100 OF US?
If you could fit the entire population of the world into a village consisting of 100 people, maintaining the proportions of all the people living on Earth, that village would consist of:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 Americans (North, Central and South)
8 Africans
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There would be:
52 women and 48 men
30 Caucasians and 70 non-Caucasians
30 Christians and 70 non-Christians
89 heterosexuals and
11 homosexuals
6 people would possess 59 percent of the wealth and they would all come from the USA
80 would live in poverty
70 would be illiterate
50 would suffer from hunger and malnutrition
1 would be dying
1 would be being born
1 would own a computer
1 (yes, only one) would have a university degree
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If we looked at the world in this way, the need for acceptance and understanding would be obvious.
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But consider again the following:
* -- If you woke up this morning in good health, you have more luck than one million people … who won’t live through the week.
* -- If you have never experienced the horror of war, the solitude of prison, the pain of torture, were not close to death from starvation, then you are better off than 500 million people.
* -- If you can go to your place of worship without fear that someone will assault or kill you, then you are luckier than 3 billion (that’s right … with a ‘b’) people.
* -- If you have a full fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head, and a place to sleep, you are wealthier than 75% of the world’s population.
* -- If you currently have money in the bank, in your wallet and a few coins in your purse, you are one of eight of the privileged few amongst the 100 people in the world.
* -- If your parents are still alive and still married, you’re a rare individual.
* -- If someone sent you this message, you’re extremely lucky, Because someone is thinking of you and because you don’t comprise one of those 2 billion people in the world today who cannot read.
* -- AND SO …
* -- Work like you don’t need the money. Love like nobody has ever hurt you. Dance like nobody is watching. Sing like nobody is listening. Live as if this was paradise on Earth.
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Send this message to your friends. Bypass those who are determined to see the worst in the world no matter what.
If you don’t send it, nothing will happen. If you do send it, someone might smile while they are reading it, and that will be a positive.
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And, apart from that, simply have a nice day.
-- Author unknown
royexum@aol.com