Do you often feel unoptimistic about life? Like everything is stacked against you? Like your life has been the worst in history? Like everything is going to hell? Well, these feelings are two things: normal and wrong. In reality, if you’re reading this, your life is probably pretty great. Your life is probably so great, that the idea of the glass “half full” doesn’t even make sense. It’s probably more like 99% full, given how much better your life is than almost all of the humans that have ever lived. Let’s go through a few reasons that you should be grateful for your life.

1. The Internet: For millennia, the fastest way to spread information was a guy on horseback, you had to do years of intensive research to discover the origin of a strange idiom, and online video didn’t exist. Just think about how awesome the internet is for a second. Almost the entirety of human knowledge is at your fingertips. How magic is that? Your mind should be blown every time you open a new tab at the sheer wonder that you get to be born in such an exciting time for humanity.
2. Hot, running water: When you turn on the faucet, water comes out. If you want, that water can be hot. Think about it: you are able to have gallons of hot water on a daily basis. Many, many humans today don’t have access to this, not to mention the access to clean water. We’re probably living in the most hygienic period in human history. Running water is pretty awesome.
3. The Library: The Elmhurst Public Library has a large selection of books available. It also has several study rooms for anyone to use if they need a quiet place to study. It has a 3D printer, a poster printer, a teen room, a cafe, and various events and classes. And the best part? All of this is available for free for Elmhurst residents. This is much better than most towns in America have, and also better than everything before libraries existed.
4. Democracy: Ever since the dawn of agriculture, most humans have lived in a nation ruled by a monarch or an autocrat. Even in most democracies throughout history, large swaths of the population have been excluded from participation. And while our democracy is (obviously) not perfect, and from an absolute perspective a pretty bad government, when one considers the majority of the governments throughout history, from feudalism to fascism to communism, ours seems pretty great. And democracies are better at self-improvement than any other form of government since complaints from the people will (eventually) be translated into public policy, so be thankful.
5. Modern Medicine: Life expectancies in industrialized nations have kept rising and rising, and are now at levels never before seen in human history. In the past, influenza could be a death sentence. Now, it’s a week off from school. It’s important to remember that antibiotics are a relatively recent invention, and so is anesthesia. There is an enormous amount of pain and suffering being prevented by these things. Antibiotics have allowed many people who would’ve otherwise died of diseases like tuberculosis, which had hitherto been incurable, to survive, a major miracle. Our knowledge about the human body has allowed absolutely miraculous improvements in quality of life.
6. Not Having to Hunt or Gather for Food: For most of human history, agriculture didn’t even exist, and humans had to spend all of their time acquiring food. They had no time left for philosophizing, for inventing, for writing jokes, for discovering the laws of physics, or for any of the other activities that provide true meaning to human lives.
7. Not Having to Do Hours of Back-Breaking Labour to Get Food: Even after we had agriculture, the manner in which society was organized resulted in a large peasantry which, once again, had to spend all of their time producing food, but this time lots of it went to the nobility. Feudalism sucked, didn’t it? It’s nice that that’s over, and that today, a tiny portion of the population can make enough food for everybody (that doesn’t necessarily mean that everybody gets enough food, but it’s pretty amazing that we can make enough).
8. This Article: It has been shown that thinking about what you’re grateful for likely increases your health and happiness, so you’re welcome.

With so many things to be grateful for, why do we tend to focus on the negative and ignore the many positives? People naturally focus on things that hinder them, and they don’t notice things that help them. But, with some effort, we can all be more appreciative of the wonders of modern life.