“Being grateful is just having breath, just being around people I love and people who love me.”
Jamarr
Bright Lights/Young Lives is a special project within our Grateful Voices video series which aims to uplift the personal stories and reflections of young people, aged 16 – 30 years old. The series is made up of short-form documentaries featuring young adults from a variety of backgrounds talking about what it means for them to live gratefully, how they embody this commitment, how gratefulness was awakened in them, and why they believe it matters and can make a difference in our world. The intention of these stories is to demonstrate the reality and relevance of Grateful Living across a diverse, inclusive continuum, and to share the insights, grateful perspectives, and rich sense of possibility that so many young people hold. In this short video, we hear from Jamarr Hall.
Video Transcript
My name is Jamarr Hall. I’m 30 years old, born and raised in the city of Philadelphia, north Philly to be specific. I own a plumbing company in the city of Philadelphia called Honest Plumbing and Heating LLC.
What superpower would you want?
Between invisibility and flight. Flight, because I can pick up, go at any time, go how far or how fast I want. I just want to be left alone sometimes. I like quiet.
The ordinary things that keep me being grateful is just reaching into my back pocket when I’m at the gas station knowing that I can afford a certain amount of gas. You have to be grateful for that, right? No, sometimes I kick myself because I’m like, I’m over here complaining about whether I want chicken or turkey tonight, when there’s somebody that just wants a meal. So I’m grateful just to be able to cook a meal, provide for my family. That’s one thing I would say that I experience upon a day-to-day basis of how grateful I am.
Being grateful is just having breath, just being around people I love and people who love me. You can stress about a million things in this world, but as long as you remember that a lot of people didn’t make it to today. There’s a lot of people that was left in yesterday that didn’t make it to this very moment, so I’m grateful just for that.
One example being I lost my mother when I was seven, so just going from that point of being seven years old to being 30 now, I have more days without her than with her. I’ve learned that to be grateful, it is a choice, but I continue to choose it. I look at the times, the memories I do have of a birthday celebration where she had a little birthday party for me. I look at those moments and I say like, you know what, I’m grateful just to have that because at any day, any moment, it could be all taken away.
All I know is the happy. Yeah, we have bad moments too, but all I know is the happy and I’m appreciative for both, but yeah…
Bright Lights/Young Lives has been executed in honor/memory of the extraordinary life of Julia Burke, who lived her passion for life out loud. Funding for the series came from The Julia Burke Foundation. The videos were produced by Greg Corbin and edited by Jordan Francis. The Grateful Living Team oversaw the project with grateful hearts.
Visit Grateful Voices to see more stories about living gratefully.
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