Yesterday, DrTanya’s topic for the #5Things challenge was things you (sometimes) take for granted. I realize I take a lot of things for granted that I really shouldn’t. Here are just five.
1. My intelligence. I don’t take it as much for granted as I used to when in school, but i still feel that I pretty much consider my high IQ a given. Not only that, but I usually find that I’m surprised when others aren’t as intellectually capable as I am. Of course, I don’t mean my fellow clients at the care facility. In fact, they have taught me quite a lesson in humility.
2. My access to medical care. I don’t take my access to long-term care for granted, because that was a fight, but my basic health insurance coverage, I certainly do take for granted. Of course, it is mandatory here in the Netherlands and even those who don’t pay their premiums can’t be refused insurance for at least six months while the insurance company tries to sort things out with them.
3. A roof over my head. I’ve never been without shelter, although in a sense I’ve often felt “homeless”. In the psychiatric hospital, I knew several ppatients who had no home other than the hospital and who were regularly suspended from the ward into the homeless shelter. In this sense, it is really surprising that I never even considered this would happen to me, since I too for several years had no home other than the hospital. I think this signals how secure I felt, in a sense, at the ward I resided at back then.
4. Electricity. I never had to pay my own electricity bills, at least not directly. I mean, even when my husband and I lived together, my husband paid the electricity bills. As a result, I’m hardly aware of how much energy really costs. My husband did tell me how well we did compared to other households and we were always relatively frugal. Even so, it all seems a bit abstract to me.
5. Access to a computer. I don’t take Internet access for granted, but access to a computer, I certainly do. Even in my early days at the locked psychiatric ward, I had my laptop with me and there was no way anyone could take it from me, regardless of what the rules said about only certain electronics being permitted. Thankfully, my nursing staff did understand.
What things do you take for granted?
A Multitude of Musings 
Those are all things we overlook and take for granted, we shouldn’t though.
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Agree. Thank you for commenting.
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I appreciate your experience learning of what you arent grateful for; we are always thinking of what we have as a way of relating with ourselves, almost erasing what’s not humbled within us. I also take my intelligence for granted and find it hard to communicate as I wish to hide it.
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Thank you for sharing your perspective. You try to hide your intelligence? That’s interesting.
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You’ve got a good list here Astrid. We do take these things as granted, as our right.
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Thank you for commenting. Yes, I agree we often see these things as a right even though they aren’t.
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You’re welcome! Very true.
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I kind of take my access to a computer for granted too. I’ve never been without one and if I had to I don’t know how I’d manage. X
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Well, I was without one as a child, but even then my parents had a computer.
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