Remember To Treasure The Ordinary
When
everyone you know is wealthy, it is easy to forget how lucky you are to
have what you have. Even if you don’t think you are wealthy, if
you are reading this, you probably are rich compared to millions who
don’t have the benefit of computers, the internet or even
electricity. If you have eaten recently and have clean water to drink
and wash with; if the air you breathe is clean, you are doing better
than many. If you have a roof over your head, that’s something to
be grateful for. If you can speak your opinion freely and can go where
you want when you want to, you can count yourself fortunate.
It
is easy to take for granted those wonders that have become commonplace
in this miraculous age. You can read. How amazing is that? You lived
through birth, infancy, childhood diseases, accidents, maybe surgeries.
Perhaps you have the ability to see clearly because of corrective
lenses. It wasn’t long ago that the odds would have been against
these things happening to an ordinary person.
To
be an ordinary human in this age is remarkable. But then to be an
ordinary human in any age has always been remarkable. To have binary
vision, an opposable thumb, upright gait, speech, smooth skin,
sensitive fingers, and a brain like no other species, these would be
the envy of other species, if they had the capacity to envy. Which we
do. We get to have complex emotions, which don’t always seem to
be a boon, but they offer the possibility of experiencing love in its
many flavors. We get to experience beauty, awe, laughter, sensuality,
and connectedness. We even have ideas. True, many of them are wrong,
but thinking is a precious capacity if used responsibly.
There
are tradeoffs of course. In order to have fingers that can pick up a
grain of rice, we lost the claws. In order to eat almost anything and
form words, we lost the fangs, and because we got this nice sensual
skin instead of hide, we are chewy to predators. So we are a nervous
species. We are by nature alert to danger, and we remember what has
hurt us in the past. Our big brains can get overly busy and keep us
from relaxing. We learn really quickly, so we easily form habits that
enable us to not have to think at all about much of what we do. So what
we do can become quite complex. In its complexity, our culture can lose
its naturalness, and we have to be taught to relax and be natural.
Sometimes we need to be reminded to cultivate gratitude.
Gratitude
isn’t just justified. It is pragmatic. When you activate
gratitude, you turn off parts of your brain that are working on
distress. Gratitude and compassion together open the doors to the
experience of joy.
So
remind yourself often to be grateful, to slow down and to be calm.
Notice the many blessings you receive in this incarnation. Remember
them. List them. Write about them. Live in gratitude. Treasure the
ordinary.
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