To ask if you believe you’ve lived a luckier life than most?

Guys I don't thonk arguing with Abba is healthy for anyone considering her earlier posts

Right so we should all walk around wearing hair shirts? I think its important to feel grateful for our good fortune - that doesn’t mean not accept our country’s failings - but work to be a better country rather than beat ourselves up.

Absolutely. I was brought up though not born in the UK. My parents are educated and solvent and wanted me and all of my siblings. I’m healthy, have a healthy husband and two beautiful children, access to healthcare and education free at the point of use, a home of my own, the vote, I live in a safe picturesque village and have wonderful friends and a job I love, we have enough money for food, bills, clothes. Compared to millions of millions of women living now and in the past I live in a land of milk and honey and I’m extraordinarily grateful.

I agree completely and that’s despite me being a ex addict, chronically ill, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and domestic violence as an adult. I consider myself incredibly lucky, I’ve survived despite the odds and while im far from rich in finances I’m happy, relatively stable and incredibly grateful to be here. I’m deeply loved and I have Parker I feel the same about. Every single day I find something to be grateful for and I think that is what matters to me and makes me lucky. If something bad happens, I look for the silver lining every single time otherwise I would have been consumed by misery and “why me-ness”. But I’m very happy and very lucky.

That’s why I deliberately used the words ‘absolute poverty”. Poverty in developed societies is relative, not absolute.

To simply be born in the UK (and have parents that are vaguely ok) means that you are luckier than the majority of people in the world. Watch the news.

Even with that example, the posters are benefitting from inequality.

Many of the ancestors of the wealthy families in the UK, became wealthy by invading and stealing resources from other countries.

As we all know.

So instead of saying "we are lucky to live in the uk".

We should maybe say

"look at all the suffering that our ancestors from the UK inflicted on the rest of the world,"

Huge amount of luck. Born in the late 20th century in one of the richest countries in the world to parents who had jobs and a house and were mentally and physically stable. They weren't peasants trying to keep us all alive by planting one grain of corn for every three they got back. I don't think we have any concept of how grindingly poor the majority of humans have been throughout history.

I wasn't giving to be sent up a chimney, sent down the pit or taken as a janissary to the Ottoman court as a child, or raped as a teenager and forced to marry him because I was the one at fault.

Or just die of polio as a toddler.

And my health is decent. I'm only in my 40s but have friends whose lifes are so curtailed by their health.

Obviously I'll still have a whine about the fact that house prices are unreasonable, and they don't make Fuse bars any more, and I don't have a trust fund, and it would be really nice if humans could stop killing each other, but really I'm pretty lucky.

Lots of things in my life have been down to pure luck. Being born to my parents, living in the North of England, my sister, meeting my husband, I’m lucky that I gave the perseverance to end her e multiple cycles of IVF so that I didn’t give up after the first 5! I don’t consider my getting a good job, paying off my mortgage in my 30s, having good holidays and disposable income to be lucky, I’d call it hard work and determination not to get stuck in a low paid job like a lot of my friends with almost identi-kit upbringings have done.

Feel free if it would make you happy.
most people are talking about wealth/being rich in global terms rather than in UK terms. But am sure you already know that.

@P00hsticks 100 per cent no

Yes.

Would you?

And money.

Do you want me to quote all the threads mentioning being born into rich families, for you?

The majority of posts have talked about health, safety and education.

This ^ If you have a good start in life you’re lucky beyond belief

I'm sorry that happened to you...that is truly awful. I think it's so silly going on about having running water blah blah. I remember one of the school mums was from a tiny village in the Himalayas (not sure how she ended up here as I only spoke to her once).....not a war zone of course but without the luxuries we have here. She thought life here was terrible because everyone was isolated at home. She was used to being with people all day and all the children playing together.

@P00hsticks I like that. No I wouldn't.

Yes, very. I have never been hungry. Like really hungry, not just ive missed a meal hungry. In terms of human existence that must be pretty rare. But I am very grateful and am aware that could change very easily.

Ive also always manged to have shelter than was warm, dry and safe and again think this must be rare overal.

I think of it like this.

If everyone in the world was represented by a raffle ticket, if given the choice would you put yours back into the bowl and pull out another one at random instead ?

My DM always tells me I’m not a lucky person, but I met my incredible DH and feel like the luckiest woman alive because of it.

“Luck” isn’t just defined by money.

Most of the posts have talked about physical wealth actually.

Oh yes. I call myself the luckiest woman in the world.
I had a miserable childhood and adolescence and ended up with a much older man who trafficked me into prostitution, and when I was too old for him he tried to kill me and I ended up homeless and an addict for years.

Doesn't sound very lucky does it!

But I am. I'm the luckiest woman alive. I lived, when I know lots of women who I was made to work with who died, or are still "missing," or addicts or both. When a man took an iron bar to my head it didn't kill me.

I've got a home and it's clean and warm and full of food.
I've got my daughter.
I've got my dog.
I've got my allotment and a job and enough money to live on and I don't have to get on my knees for a penny of it.

I tell my daughter all the time that we're so lucky, we're the luckiest girls in the world.

It depends on how you measure things and what you consider lucky.

I feel lucky, I'm sure others wouldn't think so. I have a loving family, good neighbours, friends, I can pay my bills, I'm reasonably healthy, no aches or pains.

I'm technically unlucky as I never won a prize.and don't have a lot of money.

I think I am lucky. I lost my mum last year I was just 40. That of course is horrible but I’m lucky I reached the grand only age of 40 until I found out what grief really is. I have a lovely husband and 2 beautiful boys to get me through. I am lucky some people experience grief as kids.