Gratefulness

Appreciation & Gratefulness

                                                          Photo Creddit: Jorge Vergara E.

What’s left for us to know and have? Many people have none. Uncomfortable as it may seem, this  is sort of  a mystery.

We can still start appreciating the obvious, which certainly is the most difficult. Why? Because, most we do have or are, is transparent or invisible. Therefore it is hard to "crack open" the obvious. But it is  also very rewarding.

We live. We didn’t create our own life. Most probably we are also healthy; we cannot add almost anything to this, although we might take good care of ourselves.

Probably we had three meals yesterday, and took a bath and slept in a bed.

To my surprise, half the world population (2011) –some 7 billion human beings— does not have any of the above-mentioned.

So an old wise teaching is this: appreciate all we have and are; called gratefulness

It requires courage, discipline, insight and compassion to change and sustain change; personal, organizational and social, and at the planet level.

It requires the same to overcome the “we-them” divide mentality, in believing we are antagonists or that “we” are right and “they” are wrong.

There is only “us” or “we”. In the short run, of course we pay “or bills, taxes” and mind our business. "We & us", are in the same "boat". Economy, climate, migration patters, business, mobile phone are all globalized. “We” are “them”, and “they” are “us”.

Even if we try to protect "ourselves" in a small sheltered cocoon, this is no longer sustinable. "We" and "us" are being hit by some or other misfortunes and accidents o a global and local scale. 


 There no safe place anymore. The world has become so small.

When the tornadoes hit cities, they blow away most houses. When earthquakes hit cities, everyone is affected. In the recent Tsunami in Japan more than 90% of lost people lost lives due to high sea water, the quake, the nuclear radiation at Fukushima nuclear reactor plant breakdowns.

Total safety and isolation is also illusion. We are "in the same boat". 


Chernobyl affected most Europeans, nor only Uccraine, the former USSR. When the Iceland volcanoes went into eruption last year  (2010)  most Europe air traffic was paralyzed for some weeks. 


When the 2004 Asian Tsunami killed some 200,000 people in a single day, the loss and devastation affected most people

“We" are "us”.

AN   OLD  TAOIST  STORY

Perhaps you have read one of those “good news/bad news” tales: A peasant receives a sorely needed horse from a friend: good news! But the horse soon becomes seriously ill: bad news. A kindly aunt offers to pay for the poor animal’s medicine: good news. But as the peasant travels to the apothecary, robbers attack him. So the story goes, on and on through many changes of fortune. The concluding message – “Good news, bad news: Who knows?” – applies readily to gratefulness. We naturally give thanks for things we perceive to be beneficial, whereas we tend to balk at misfortune. But if we could see the grand interweaving of the events of our lives, we might be surprised. Opportunities for gratitude lie imbedded in “bad” news just as often as in “good”.


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