"Be grateful. How thankful we ought to be. How comfortably we live. How very easy is life compared to what it once was.... We have it so easy, so pleasant, so delightful. We ride in cars that are warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
"What a great season in the history of the world this is in which to be alive and in which to be young. Sometimes I wish that I were as young as you are—and then when I think of what I have been through I am glad I am not. But what a wonderful season to be alive....
"[We have] the miracles of medicine, the miracles of science, the miracles of communication, transportation, education—what a wonderful time in which to live. Of all of these wondrous, challenging things with which we live, I hope you regard it a blessing to be alive in this great age of the world.... I hope you walk with gratitude in your hearts, really. Grateful people are respectful people. Grateful people are courteous people. Grateful people are kindly people. Be grateful."
- Gordon B. Hinckley, Smithfield/Logan Utah Regional Conference, April 21, 1996; see TGBH p. 250
President Hinckley always seemed to maintain a wonderfully optimistic perspective on life. In this quote he reminds us how blessed we are in our modern lives. We have so much for which to be grateful, in our relatively pleasant and comfortable circumstances.
President Hinckley encourages us to remember the comfort and ease of our lives, along with the many miracles of our time—in medicine, science, communication, transportation, and education. Those miracles he described in 1996 are even further surpassed in the 20 years since then, in the explosion of the technology of our modern information age. Indeed, in so many ways, "what a wonderful time in which to live."
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