When we live life, we often don’t  realize what we take for granted. This is especially true for adolescents.

So many other people in the world  are less fortunate than we are , but  we still complain of what we don’t have.We also judge people by the material items  they have and their possession and make decisions about who they are and what they stand for based on this. Countless people have called me “rich” because they see me in a  new pair of shoes or I get a new phone but, the truth is, my family is not rich.  I come from a low- income family that needs government help. I am not saying my mother doesn’t work hard to get the things  my three sisters and I have and need, but we struggle just like any other low- income family.

Aldous Huxley, an English poet and novelist, once said,  “Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. That  men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.”

This sentiment is  common in American society when kids cry when they don’t get the toy they want or when adults don’t get the house they dreamed of or the car they really want. Americans  pout and get angry.

I know that I certainly have taken things for granted and I still do but I recently had a reality check when a friend of mine and I were talking and  she told me about life at home and how she  had to hustle (nothing illegal) for her family for a long time and that, whenever she had gotten money, she would help the family out and get groceries for the house. If she hadn’t told me that I would never have known that she had to do that. To learn that she took what little  money she got from doing miscellaneous things and used it to help support her family made me feel surprised to learn that other kids my age do this as well.

Everybody has a story, and everybody has a struggle.  Yes, some people are doing better than others and  we always want more things because we are envious of  people who have more than we do , but that doesn’t need to be the case.

The most important idea we have to remember at the end of the day is that we have to be happy and content with the situation we are in and just live life to the fullest. If you want change in your life — if you want to live better or have more – – you can do it, but don’t blame others for what they have as the reason you don’t.