thanksgiving

There are so many things we can be thankful for in our lives.  All too often the greed inside pushes us to look at what we don’t have instead of being grateful for what we do have.

Modern Conveniences

We live like kings, nay I daresay we live better than the kings of old thanks to modern conveniences.  Don’t believe me?  Let me try and convince you.

For starters a king of medieval Europe would live in a castle or keep.  A big stone structure that would get very cold during the winter.  Servants would tend to fireplaces to keep it warm.  We have a gas furnace that keeps us warm during the winter, and we don’t have to tend to it ourselves.  The furnace and modern construction practices of our house keep the cold out and the warm in.  If I want it warmer or cooler, I press a button.

A king would have a small army of servants to run the kitchen.  They would use open fires to cook and root cellars to keep vegetables fresh.    We have a gas oven, dishwasher, microwave oven, and refrigerator.  I can make myself lunch in two minutes and thirty seconds.  Let’s not even get into culinary selection.  While farm-to-table is increasingly popular nowadays we still have the option to eat out-of-season foods.  Guess what a king would be eating in November… that’s right, root vegetables.

I don’t like doing laundry, and with a toddler in the house we have been doing a lot of laundry lately, but thanks to a washing machine and dryer the amount of work it takes pales in comparison to what medieval servants would have to do by hand.  I remember washing some clothes in the bathtub once right after I graduated from college.  Yup, that was a once in a lifetime experience.  Now I press some buttons and walk away.

Probably one of the best modern conveniences has to be indoor plumbing.  The luxury of turning a handle and having fresh potable water pour out is amazing.  I don’t know about you, but I bathe every day, an experience that escaped kings of old.  Hey, if everyone is doing it (or not), then the odor would blend in after a while.  Finally, when I poop, it doesn’t slide down the outside of the castle wall.  Instead it gets transported far far away from where I live and gets transformed into something cleaner and more useful.

The court jester, yep the one with the funny hat and found on playing cards, was one channel of entertainment.  If his routine got boring, I guess you could have him beheaded if that tickled your fancy, but I would imagine that boredom would settle in pretty quickly after that final show.  For a little more than a quarter a day, I have access to thousands of hours of tv shows and movies courtesy of Netflix.  Some of the very best entertainers in the world can be brought to my ‘doorstep’ for a single quarter.  Think about that for a minute.

It blows the mind how good we have it today.  Today is a truly glorious time to be alive.

What modern conveniences are you thankful for?