#We Can Thrive

When people post “#blessed,” I often feel two things at once. First, a flicker of gladness because gratitude is a beautiful habit, and noticing what we have keeps us from drowning in scarcity. Then, right behind it, a pang. Because so often, blessed gets tangled with entitled.

It’s easy to mistake fortune for virtue, to believe that comfort, health, or wealth came entirely from our own good choices. But that’s not reality. Not in nature, and not in us.

⛪ Where That Idea Came From

The habit of linking success with goodness has deep roots. Early colonial settlers, shaped by Puritanism, saw diligence, frugality, and self-discipline as signs of divine favor. Many believed salvation was predestined, i.e. chosen by God before birth, so outward success became evidence of being among the elect.

If your crops grew or your home prospered, it read as proof of goodness. If you struggled, it meant you’d failed in work or faith, and the community could wash its hands of you.

That story still shapes how we see success today, even when we’ve forgotten where it came from. Sociologist Max Weber called it the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism—the fusion of profit and piety, where success feels righteous and failure feels shameful.

Even now, in a supposedly secular culture, we still breathe that air. When someone says, “I’m blessed,” it can echo that old theology: “I have because I’m good.” And when that mindset hardens, it blinds us to luck, inequity, and the simple truth that other people’s soil might be barren because the forest around them never gave them light.

🌾 Hard Work and Hard Soil

Sometimes a farmer really does fall behind. Maybe the frost came early. Maybe the plow broke, or the body did, or the mind spun out in circles no one could see. Even if a field lies fallow from illness, grief, or exhaustion, does that mean the farmer deserves to starve? Do their children?

If you’re the one staring at a barren field, your story isn’t over. Soil can rest and renew. You are not defined by a single lost season. Keep going.

And if you’re the one with a good harvest, if the sun found you and the rain came on time, take joy in that. You worked for it. You should be proud. But effort isn’t exclusive to you. Others have worked just as hard in different soil. So be grateful, count your blessings, but don’t mistake sunlight for sainthood. If you want to be God’s people, the first step is to stop judging those still in shadow. The second is to help build systems where light is shared.

With that said, no one is asking you to throw yourself into the darkness or to risk your nest. Sharing means supporting ideas and leaders who know how to design for shared light. That’s called stewardship.

🌱 The Forest Knows Better

A healthy ecosystem can shelter a late blooming tree until next season. But our culture, still echoing its Puritan ghosts, likes to confuse hardship with moral failure. It withholds compassion from those who falter, as if mercy were something to earn.

People cling to this so-called ethic because it flatters them. But it doesn’t serve them, not really.

Imagine each of us as a tree in a vast, living forest. We draw from shared soil, weather, and histories. Some grow in clearings where the sun pours freely; others struggle for light beneath heavy canopies. The tree in the clearing isn’t wrong for thriving. But if it forgets that its strength depends on the same soil and rain as the rest, if it blocks the light and drinks more than it needs, the whole forest suffers. The canopy thins, roots dry out, and even the tallest tree weakens when the ground erodes beneath it.

That’s what happens when gratitude turns to entitlement, when “I’m blessed” becomes “I deserved this.”

🌞 Gratitude vs. Entitlement

The health of our shared forest depends on how we think about each other and ourselves.

Gratitude says, “I grew because the soil was generous, the rain fell, the fungi fed me, and others protected my sapling self.” Entitlement says, “I grew because I am better, and the smaller trees should try harder.”

Gratitude remembers the network. Entitlement forgets the forest.

🌳 The Billionaire Tree

Every ecosystem has limits. In a healthy forest, tall trees share: sunlight filters down in dapples, fallen leaves enrich the soil, and nutrients circulate through roots and fungi. But balance tips when one mutant tree grows too wide, hoarding light and water. At first, it looks powerful. Its branches stretch farther than any other’s, but beneath it, the forest dims. The roots nearby die. Eventually, even the giant begins to starve, feeding on a system it no longer sustains.

That’s our economy now. Extreme wealth does to societies what overgrowth does to forests. No ecosystem can survive that imbalance for long.

🍂 Falling and Returning

The good news is that collapse in nature is never the end. When a giant falls, its trunk becomes a nurse log and rich soil for the next generation. Its decay feeds mushrooms, moss, and saplings that could never grow in its shadow. That’s redemption through rejoining the cycle.

Our society could do the same. When we let go of the myth that success requires someone else’s failure—when we remember that the health of the tallest depends on the smallest—we can begin to grow again, together.

🌿 What It Means to Be Truly Blessed

To say “I am blessed” is a beautiful act of gratitude. Just remember: the blessed worked hard, yes, and they were also lucky. They weren’t chosen.

To be blessed is to receive and to return: stewardship. It’s sunlight caught and shared, nourishment passed through roots. Gratitude is what keeps the forest alive. It’s remembering that our canopy’s beauty is borrowed light, and that gratitude keeps the forest alive.