Living in a first world country, there are many times that Americans feel like we ourselves are the deprived ones.

Living in a nation drenched in freedom and surrounded by opportunity that is free of oppression, internal war, plaguing diseases and mass hunger, tends to make people forget that these things are being taken for granted. It is human nature to want and we students covet every object of material possession with a large price tag on it.

Instead of just looking for more things to buy, I ask that you think of all the simple things you own because most other people on this planet do not; things like shoes, food in a refrigerator, relatives, functioning or complete limbs, a place of living, or even access to education everyday. Even things that we do not like have been colloquially dubbed as “first world problems” and serve to remind us of the blessings in our life. For those who can not fit their hand down a Pringles can after eating the first half, experience a dysfunctional TV remote, or have so much left over food on their plate they dump it in the trash, you know what I’m talking about.

While we struggle for more material possessions than we could possibly have, there are people out there who ask themselves “Am I eating today?” It makes you wonder what it truly takes to experience gratitude other than a yearly holiday where everyone eats a bird the size of a beach ball. Being thankful is not a seasonal thing, but a practice that one should participate in at least every once in a while, religious or not, but as you well know, not everything desired by the human mind entails material possession. Sometimes what you want is not always necessary and sometimes what you want isn’t what you ‘need’, so beyond material possession, what is it you want?