{"id":6776,"date":"2016-10-13T11:49:22","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T11:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/somethingishappening.org\/blog\/?p=6776"},"modified":"2019-03-07T15:15:03","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T15:15:03","slug":"gratitude-or-pride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/somethingishappening.org\/blog\/gratitude-or-pride\/","title":{"rendered":"Gratitude or pride?"},"content":{"rendered":"

At fifty-one years old, I own three businesses, have written three books, played in an award-winning country band, and am blessed with having more “enough-ness” than any man could ask for. Rewind fifteen short years ago, and I was down and out. “Scarce-ness” was the watchword of the year. My wife asked me once, \u201cDon\u2019t you feel proud of all you\u2019ve accomplished, considering where you were back then?\u201d I didn\u2019t really know how I felt until she asked me. But I do now…. I can honestly say that I don\u2019t feel as much pride in those accomplishments as I do gratitude. Why? Well it\u2019s certainly not because I\u2019m some morally superior, worldly-wise specimen of humility. It\u2019s just that I\u2019ve been lucky enough to see the truth: That people much smarter, capable and skilled than I have ended up far worse. There is undoubtedly a connection between where one ends up in life and one\u2019s skill, education, and perseverance. But I know that just as often the difference comes down to one or two little choices we make; a little bit of \u201cbeing in the right place at the right time,\u201d or what appears to be divine intervention that spells the difference between fame and obscurity, skid row and middle class\u2014even life or death.
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