I am glad to be alive at this time in history too.

I mean, the amount of pain and despair that the majority of human history has endured is nearly unfathomable.

Cars are a recent thing.

So are airplanes, computers, phones, antibiotics, computers, watches, general sanitation, and comfortable beds.

Heaven help me, I don’t know how I would survive without A/C either.

The point is to appreciate what you have…

My guess is that many kings and queens of the past would have traded anything for a shot of penicillin.

Because our age is ugly in many ways, now and then I have to remind myself that we live in a golden moment of time, free from most of the miseries that stalked my great-grandparents on the West Texas frontier in the 1880s: rotten teeth, chronic sinus infections, poor nutrition, isolation and darkness, heat and cold, endless labor, and babies who died in a parent’s arms. There was ugliness in those times too. And, come to think of it, the ages of Paul, Jesus, and Moses weren’t so great either. Ramses II slaughtered male babies, and the lofty Roman Empire crucified prophets. I’m glad to be alive at this time in history. If that doesn’t always come through in these pages, it should.

-John Erickson, Story Craft (Amazon)