Plethora Of Thoughts ✨

#42 Taking For Granted..!

"We never appreciate anything, after a while, we take everything for granted. We are so focused on our petty miseries that we tend to lose the little joys, the bigger picture. You see, only when we lose something we tend to see its value, only then we appreciate it. So what if we lose something voluntarily, how will our outlook towards life change?"

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To be mindful means to be grateful. But since we are always living in the future or the past, it is impossible for us to see the abundance in our lives in the present moment.

Take walking, for example, something we all take for granted. But we are all bound to get old, and slowly lose our ability to walk with ease, without any pain. And there is also the risk of a disease or an accident that can take all that away from us in an instant. One can meditate on that, imagine being old, unable to walk, or paralyzed. But you can take this one step further. For a day, give up your ability to walk. Have someone carry you everywhere, shower you, feed you. Go through that discomfort and see the next day how mindful and grateful you become whenever you take a step!

Similarly, you can do this with everything. We take food for granted. We mindlessly eat one meal after the other, while we are scrolling through our social media feed. We are never present. So again, take that food away for 2-3 full days. And when you get to eat for the first time after 3 days, see how present you are. Maintain that presence.

Close your eyes, and be blind for a few days. Voluntarily give up your eyesight and experience reality without one of your senses. If you are wearing glasses, give them up for a while and see how hard everything becomes around you.

Take every aspect of your life, and remove something simple that you take for granted. It can be your sense of smell, your ability to see or hear, or your ability to walk. Most of us have a roof above our heads, but many people do not. Be homeless for a few days, live off the streets, then the way you view everything will fundamentally change.

This may sound extreme. Most of us have daily duties that do not allow us to practice this extreme form of gratitude. Yet, even sitting silently for a few minutes and visualizing how your life would be after a cancer diagnosis, after losing someone close to you can be life-altering. But, to actually live it every second, that is entirely different.