A New Lesson I Learned: Gratefulness
Many people (probably everyone) have moments in their life where they take things for granted. For sure I have. But does that make you a terrible human being? No. It’s just part of everyday nature to forget the things you are blessed with because you’re so used to dealing with it every single day. Thinking about ALL the things you are blessed with is very hard to do. There are just so many to list, it’d take hours to finish. Yet, the small percentage of people in this world that do think about their blessings and tell us to be more grateful makes the rest of us feel slightly guilty.
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Gratefulness, a synonym to being thankful, has it’s own holiday for you to think about the good things and what you are blessed with. At the same time, you celebrate it with a huge feast with everyone and many of us just show up for the food. We all wish to have a bit more gratefulness and the ability to be grateful all the time, but it’s just so hard to. But, that does not mean you can’t try.
For me, I realized all of this for a long time, yet I never really set my mind on being better and becoming more thankful for everything. All of it just brushed through my head. Not until I watched a video on the last day of school with my last period’s teacher where I had realized, I should be thankful with the luck I have. It was the first time in a very long time where I thought to myself, “I am thankful I never experienced that yet and I can be more aware of it now because of this.” But, everything brushed through my mind yet again.
Then, I came upon an Instagram post, saying “‘It’s a beautiful thing to have lungs that allow you to breathe air and legs that allow you to climb mountains, and it’s a shame that sometimes we don’t realize that that’s enough’ -(via carteir).” That Instagram post has been in my saved and I look back at it quite often now. The post was recent, but it helped me take a bigger step and start to become more grateful with the things I have and I became more aware of what blessings I have. Gratefulness is a new lesson I learned to always have in my soul, so that it would bring out the best of me and limit my selfishness.
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Have you ever thought about being grateful to something? Was there a moment in your life where you went “ah I’m so thankful for ____?” So many stories in many books when we go to school incorporate being grateful in them. An experience of where I truly felt grateful was during my sophomore year in high school. On this particular Wednesday, I had a track and field meet that was a home meet. I was so anxious and nervous before my 100m hurdle race because I saw so many people I knew. Have you ever gotten that feeling where you were so anxious your stomach starts feeling queasy? Well, that was indeed me right before the run.
When I heard the “BANG!” of the gun signaling the start of the race, I panicked and fell right over the very first hurdle. I felt so ashamed and embarrassed about everything, but I continued on. In the moment where I got back up and ran down after the girls in front of me, I had a rush of emotions on not giving up.
After the race, many people on the team came up to me and asked if I was okay or not. I had a few scratches here and there, but I was okay. In my head though, I was a whole mess. So many things ran through my mind, but one thing stuck to me in particular, it was the moment in which I recalled a memory during on of the practices and remembered what my coach had said. She told the team, “You are a true hurdler once you fall and get back up.”
Instead of getting so angry at myself and being disappointed on how I did during the race, I felt grateful to what my couch told me. Thanks to her, I was able to calm myself down and think to myself that everything was worth it and I should be grateful for the fall. I am grateful to the fall because it now makes me less intimidated when I see a hurdle and I am not afraid of falling anymore because I experienced it already and it was not bad.
Being grateful to things in life help out everyone a lot. If it is possible, everyone should try and be grateful for at least one thing every day.
