Gratefulness
Being grateful for everything I have.
This occurs both as a duty, something that I should do every day of my life, as well as a state of mind, a philosophy of life, something that leads to happiness.
Summer holidays of 2017 are about to end and, just like any other summer holiday, they were glorious.
On the plane back from Madrid, there are approximately 2 hours to ponder peacefully and flying is my favorite time for doing so.
Even though there are many things that happen in life, which people claim happen for a specific reason as result of an ex-ante situation, and therefore seem to call for an ex-post justification, such as a so-called divine punishment or reward, an unexpected twist in a series of events, a fortunate coincidence, and other significant moments that can be read in either a positive or negative light, that can be defined as “lucky” or “unlucky”, I go so far as claiming they are only a mean to define who you are by your reaction to those events, thus your intentions following them, and not a consequence to something that you have done or not done, and therefore your actions preceding them.
You are never in control, although the illusion may be strong.
You do not choose where you are born, you may not choose how or when you die, and everything in between is an unfolding of chance-weighted outcomes, and your reactions.
There are times when despite your best efforts you may suffer enormous setbacks, or on the other side, you may, with little effort, enjoy huge benefits.
Without going into the extremes, tomorrow you may be struck with a headache, or you may find a sweet parking spot right where you need it.
We know so little of the natural world we live in. Yes, we know a lot more than we did in the past. Taking a look at the paintings from the 1600s at the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum is amusing, as it makes you wonder what sort of ingenuous beliefs our ancestors were influenced by. They’re almost laughable when thinking, “how naive”. Yet, we’re the same, except we’re shifted X number of years ahead of them, and X number of years behind someone staring at our photographs in a museum-like facility for future beings.
Point being, we know so little and we control even less, there’s no being arrogant about our current level of general knowledge, or about how good we are at mastering outcomes, at directing our choices, at making good investments, at running businesses, at restraining convicts in prisons, at flying stuff. Yes, we are good at controlling actions but only until something comes along and displaces things ever so slightly to create a disruption, at that point we are good to the extent we react to it.
I’m making an exhortation not only to be humble, but to appreciate everything that happens as a gift, as a precious opportunity of witnessing it, as part of humanity’s history or more simply, as part of our day to day history, of learning from it and therefore of improving from it because it is not our actions that determine what happened in the first place, but it is our reactions that profoundly determine who we are and being grateful is a reaction that undeniably determines our happiness.
