what a week!

Indeed… what a week! … especially for things meant to make our lives easier…

On Thursday, Microsoft decided to remind us just how much we depend on it by taking a good chunk of the world offline. Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services went down worldwide. No, it wasn't a cyberattack or an AI meltdown. Apparently, it was a network upgrade gone wrong. Thankfully, everything was eventually restored. But nothing like a little reminder that technology isn't quite as reliable as we'd like to think.

Then on Friday, just when we thought things couldn't get more interesting, the FAA decided nobody was going anywhere. All departing flights across the country were grounded for more than four hours, resulting in over 6,600 cancellations and more than 10,000 delays. Roughly 1.5 million travelers were affected. Officials were quick to point out that this had nothing to do with Microsoft's outage. Instead, the culprit was an overloaded, aging telecommunications network used by air traffic control. Apparently, the technology responsible for keeping thousands of planes safely in the air could use a little updating, too.

Meanwhile, down in New Orleans, also on Friday, a commercial tanker collided with a docked passenger riverboat on the Mississippi River. The riverboat sank, sending emergency crews scrambling to account for everyone involved. Thank God everyone was safely accounted for, but it wasn't exactly the river cruise anyone had in mind.

With all the unexpected this week, I've pretty much concluded that we take a lot for granted. Especially here, in a developed democracy with law and order and considerable civil freedoms. So much comes so easily to us. So easily, in fact, that we sometimes forget. We take a lot for granted…

We take for granted that when we flip a switch, the lights come on. We don't send the power and light company a thank-you note every morning.

We take for granted that airplanes fly. American, Delta, United, Southwest… Thousands of people climb into these giant metal tubes, travel 500 miles per hour at some 35,000 feet, and yet we'll complain because the Wi-Fi is slow or the movie selection is scarce.

We take for granted that clean water comes out of a faucet. We turn a handle and expect a small miracle multiple times a day. We forget about Papua New Guinea, Niger, Chad and elsewhere, where access to basic clean water remains a daily struggle.

We take for granted that our garbage disappears each week. We compile all our domestic discards, take them to the curb, and somehow, magically, they're gone. We rarely give much thought to the people who make that happen.

We take for granted that our food shows up at the grocery store. We rarely think about the farmers, truckers, warehouse workers and countless others whose life's work is getting it there. We're talking millions of people.

And yes, we take for granted that technology works.

As we saw this week, one Microsoft outage and suddenly half the working world doesn't know what to do with itself.

My strong sense is that we tend to appreciate things more when they're missing than when they're present. We notice the power when it goes out and the Wi-Fi when it disconnects. We notice the water when it stops running. We also notice people when they're no longer around.

What would change in us if we changed that up?

Instead of taking things for granted, what if we practiced more gratitude now?

And let's be clear. We're not just encouraging a state of being grateful; we're encouraging the consistent expression of gratitude.

Maybe then, a week when so much goes wrong can remind us of just how much actually goes right.

Respectfully…