Funny you mention a Latin American nation. Yesterday, and every Thanksgiving or any time I feel down in the dumps, I remind myself of something I saw when I was in Brazil. I was in the dumps one day due a cumulation of things that weren't going well. I took a walk to get rid of some of that frustration. Brazil, like many other Latin American nations I've visited or studied, is full of poverty you never see in the First World. I saw this poor guy on a Rio street with no legs and only one deformed arm sitting on a small wooden car mechanic's dolly (what they can lie on when going under a car) pulling himself along the streets begging for money with the people on the streets of Rio just walking past him as just another beggar. No one seemed to give a crap about him, and by watching him I knew this was just normal for him. He made barely nothing and then I could tell he had to pull himself out of the downtown area and back up the mountainside into the favela (slum) by his own deformed arm.

There is so much to be grateful in one's circumstances when I think of that, even the most essential, priceless and basic things that hide in plain view that so many take for granted.

(I did not just walk past him myself.)

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