If you can read you are blessed

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As I finished my second book in two days I think once again how blessed I am to be able to read. I think of my dad who has always had to have help to read anything of importance. I think of every person who came before and even some now who can't read or at least can't read well. Reading is such a great privilege not everyone has. Reading shouldn't be a privilege as it is a necessity to really get by in today's world but it is because not everyone has the ability to read or read well. I think about how amazing it is to be able to read a book and lose myself in the words written in the many pages. I get to read about the lives of others and learn from their experiences. I get to read fiction and be lost in a world not like my own. I am so blessed to be able to go to the library pick up a book and be able to read it. I think back to a time when people controlled others and took away their right to education and the ability to read. At one time learning to read was not considered important. Back in the day farmers' children were used as labor and their job was to work on the farm and learning to read was not considered important. Today our entire world runs with the assumption everyone can read even when not everyone can. When I think about how amazing it is that I can read and write and put my thoughts on paper or in print and how not everyone has that ability it does make me feel blessed. I am so fortunate that I got an education. I had to work hard to get where I am. Some things came more easily to me than others but I worked to better myself and it wasn't as simple as just going to school. I had to go to school and learn and work hard but I was blessed to have that opportunity. I was blessed to go to a school that worked with me to try and make me better. It may not have been as good as other schools in the area or had some of the resources as schools that had more money but they helped me in a way my dad never got. Schools have learned new things over the years and now they do things much differently than they did when I was a kid. I remember the teacher I'm working with now asking if I ever had OT (Occupational Therapy) for my fine motor issues. I laughed and said it was the 90s and they just threw me in an LD (Learning disabilities) classroom instead of just sending me to OT. They believed it was my inability to be able to write clearly that slowed me down and thought that putting me in a slow learners classroom it would help me and in a lot of ways it hindered me. They taught me at the same pace as all of the other kids in the room who did have some cognitive reasons for being there and not just issues with writing due to fine motor delays. I eventually caught up with and surpassed many of my peers but there are still things that I struggle with to this day because of the way they handled things. While I can read and write fairly well now my ability to do basic math still suffers from the way they handled that situation. I never learned the times tables and am still fairly slow in math. I can do basic math and even algebra (once I relearn it because I don't use it) but it takes me longer. I also don't trust my answers even when they are correct. Anyway, I think about how my academic life started and feel incredibly blessed for where I ended up. I was struggling to read in the beginning and eventually, I learned to read better than many of my peers. When I'm feeling pretty low about where I am in life I think back to the effort I've put in and where I am today and what I have and I feel pretty grateful. I am blessed to have the ability to read and write especially knowing where I started and knowing that most of my dad's family struggles with reading. Almost none of the boys on my dad's side can read or write and the ones that can can't do it well. Even the girls who can all read and write can't do it well. I am super blessed to have been given the ability to read well beyond a fifth or sixth-grade reading level. I am also grateful that my son reads well. Do not take the ability to read for granted. There are so many people who struggle with it. I wish more people would read more. It's such an amazing ability to have.