BEING GRATEFUL AND THANKFUL
On November 11, 2022, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” was released in theaters and generated approximately $205 million domestically and $176 million internationally in one weekend. “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” was the sequel to the movie “Black Panther ” that was released in 2018. By the second week of its release, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ”, was on track to top the billion dollar box office hit tier despite having unexpectedly losing one of its lead characters (Chadwick Boseman) to cancer in 2020 while directors were working on the sequel.
Boseman, who was 43 years of age when he died, was known for breathing life into legendary characters and people, the likes of which include:Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, James Brown and T’Challa (commonly known by his appointed title of “Black Panther”).
In an interview with television personality Whoopi Goldberg, Boseman’s widow,Simone Ledward Boseman, described how grateful she was to have been by her husband’s side. She also shared with Goldberg that she couldn’t “believe that I got to love this person and I also got him to love me too”.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude“. One of the ways that Boseman’s widow has lived up to these words is by keeping her husband’s legacy alive through a scholarship program at his beloved alma mater (Howard University) in Washington, D.C.
Just like Simone Boseman has done ,as well as so many others throughout the years, it’s important to learn how to see our glass half full instead of half empty no matter what is happening during the various seasons of our lives.
SEEING YOUR GLASS HALF FULL
It is so easy to get caught up in the dialogue of the mainstream media or social trends about what people think we should or ought to have.
According to www.theworldcounts.com, It’s estimated that around 385,000 babies are born worldwide every day. That’s about 267 babies a minute. Additionally, it is estimated that approximately 185,000 people die each day, which equates to millions of people who die each year. The goal of sharing these statistics is not to minimize the pain that a person feels when they lose a loved one. Rather, it is being done to reinforce the reality that death is inevitable no matter how untimely we may feel death is when when it comes to losing our loved one (s). However, a healthy part of the grief process is basking in the memories of our loved ones, and also doing what we can to advance their legacy.
BEING GRATEFUL FOR OUR HEALTH
Shortly after Boseman’s death on August 28, 2020, actor Clarke Peters, who was a former co-star of Boseman on the set of Spike Lee’s war movie, “Da 5 Bloods”,expressed his regret about pre-maturely judging Boseman. In an interview that Peters did with Good Morning Britain, Peters admitted that he told his wife that he thought Chadwick was a “Bit Precious” when his wife inquired as to how it was like working with Boseman. Peters also shared with Good Morning Britain, that the reason why he felt this way about Boseman is due to the fact that he would often see Boseman surrounded by Chinese practitioners massaging his back, a makeup lady massaging his feet and His girlfriend holding his hand whenever Boseman walked off the set of Black Panther. However, Peters nor most of the world did not know that Boseman was battling colon cancer twhile he was filming the movie that would eventually take his life at the age of 43.
The average death age in America is around 77 years. However, there are many health conditions that can affect our body during these years either that we are either are born with or that manifest themselves in our bodies over the years.
Some years ago, I injured my calf muscle which rendered me unable to walk on my calf muscle for a couple of weeks. What made it more difficult is that my home has stairs so it was a struggle to make it up and down the stairs when I was alone. During the physical challenges that I was experiencing, I was reminded of one of my heroes, Nick Vujicic , who was born without arms and legs. He also had major concerns about whether or not he would get married as well as many other concerns about how living without limbs would affect his life. He also wondered that if he did indeed find a spouse, how could he ever “hug” or “hold” her hand (something that we take for granted every day)? The silver lining in this story is that Vujicic eventually found a spouse and for more than a decade, he has been holding her in his heart.
BEING GRATEFUL FOR THE BARE ESSENTIALS
Food, water, air and shelter are the bare necessities for human survival. According to the World Health Organization, some 829,000 people are estimated to die each year from diarrhea as a result of unsafe drinking-water, sanitation and hand hygiene. Additionally, up to 820 million people (about 10% of the world’s population) regularly go to bed hungry. However, in First World countries (such as the United States, Western Europe, and their allies), the poverty levels are relatively low and having easy access to food, water and shelter have largely become a way of life.
Former cycling Olympian star Rebecca Twigg is a great example of someone who seemingly had it all, but didn’t have much money to fall back on when her Olympic career ended and she fell on hard times. Additionally, even at the height of her success in the Olympics (to include sponsorship), she never made more than $50,000 a year.
Twigg is not the only person in life that has fallen on hard times. I personally have experienced plenty of hardships in life. However, a large part of why I have still managed to emerge from those hardships is never ceasing to be grateful for the opportunity to try again. Evidence of the benefits of not giving up and being grateful for other opportunities to try again can be seen in Thomas Edison efforts to invent the light bulb. Edison had these words to say as it relates to his disappointments, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that didn’t work”.
BEING GRATEFUL FOR OPPORTUNITIES
“”Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas A. Edison.”
In the April/May 2018 edition of AARP The Magazine, Tyler contributed an article in which he expressed his gratitude to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr for his courage and strength. In the article Tyler wrote, “When I think about the courage and strength Dr. King possessed, while still a young man, I am overwhelmed with gratitude. I couldn’t imagine taking on the challenges he did, standing face to face with mobs of people filled with prejudice and hate, yet possessing the inner strength to stare them down with love.”
Under the pressures of life, it is oftentimes so very easy to get bogged down with the things that we don’t have or the things that we have not achieved. It is also very easy to get discouraged when things don’t go the way that we planned or desired. However, if we could work on getting into the habit of being more conscious of the things that we do have and also allow ourselves to become more mindful of the many sacrifices that others have made so that we can enjoy many of the things in life that have become a way of life, perhaps we will be encouraged to (like Thomas Edison) begin to view the things that did not go our way has “failures” but rather has ways that “just didn’t work.
https://people.com/movies/chadwick-bosemans-costar-clarke-peters-regrets-judging-him-on-set-hindsight-teaches-us/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg7qyecUARE – Nick Vujicic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXNaGrhjVIk
https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/deaths-per-day
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/drinking-water
https://www.who.int/news/item/15-07-2019-world-hunger-is-still-not-going-down-after-three-years-and-obesity-is-still-growing-un-report
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/feb/08/what-an-olympic-medalist-homeless-in-seattle-wants/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2022/11/11/reviewbreathtaking-black-panther-wakanda-forever-will-top-1-billion-box-office/?sh=5e173f2e6b77
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/02/entertainment/simone-boseman-chadwick-interview
https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2022/11/11/reviewbreathtaking-black-panther-wakanda-forever-will-top-1-billion-box-office/?sh=6ab64326b771
