Defining the Grateful Gesture

The poem “Defining the Grateful Gesture” made me realize how ungrateful I really am. Every day I complain about the food prepared for lunch as if it isn’t edible; I wake up every morning dreading the rest of the day at school, and I think of another excuse to get me out of football practice. Not once all day do I think about how good my life actually is, or how lucky I am to afford a lunch and tuition at a private school were I can play any sport that I want.
It is hard for me to believe that I can complain about the type of food that they are serving at lunch when not twenty miles from our school there are thousands of homeless people waiting in an endless line outside of the Nashville Rescue Mission for their only meal of the day. I wake up every morning in a bed in a house that I never once think how grateful I am to have. The problem with people who have a decent life is that they don’t know how great their life is until everything is taken away from them.
One problem I have is that I am ungrateful about my education. I dread coming to school. It is not fair when my parents work every day to better my education by paying my tuition and all I do is the bare minimum just to pass so I can drive and hang out with my friends on the weekends. If it weren’t for the privileges that I have, I probably would have thrown my life away. There are many people that don’t even have the privileges of going to school and participating in athletics.
Like the children in the poem, I am undeserving of the life that I live, of the nourishment, the shelter, and even the education that I receive. I have no idea the pain that people have that live in the streets and go to bed hungry, that don’t have the same opportunities that I have to better their lives. I regret the ungrateful feeling that I have; it makes me sick that I don’t thank God every day for allowing me to live this life.

-Devin