“Gratitude
can turn common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change
ordinary opportunities into blessings.” ~William Arthur Ward
Living in India for more
than two years now has been an eye opening experience for me, as I’ve realized
how I used to take so many things for granted. While growing up and living in
my home country (Bosnia and Herzegovina) in Europe, I was lacking gratitude for
all the blessings that surrounded me.
While sitting in our
penthouse apartment in the New Delhi suburbs, in an air-conditioned room, still
feeling the need to chill with a cool water or a mango shake due to the intense
heat (which can reach up to 118° in the summer), I could observe the construction
ground across from our building.
Constructions workers
would come in at 9am and work for twelve hours, with only a short lunch break,
without proper safety equipment, chilled water, or any shaded cover to rest.
While they’d wipe sweat
from their face, I’d imagine how hot they must be feeling, as I was sweating
even in an air-conditioned room.
Some of
them were working together with their wives, who would help them earn their
daily wage (equal to $1).
These women would carry
piles of cement and bricks on big pots on their head, from one side of the
construction site to another, sometimes climbing many stairs as well. In my
home country, I never saw women working on construction grounds or carrying
such heavy loads on their heads.
Their children would play
in front of the construction ground with sand and small rocks, as their parents
could not afford to send them to school.
I thought about how, in my
home country, children often complain that they “have to” go to school and
people complain about how tough their jobs are. These people in New Delhi could
not even dream of sending their children to school or having an eight-hour job
in an air-conditioned office.
The wives who didn’t work
on the construction ground would work in our building as maids. One of them
cleaned our home. Every day she came in with a water bottle, which she’d cool
in our refrigerator, as they did not have an electricity, not to mention a
refrigerator, in the slum where she lived with her family.
After cleaning our home,
she’d run back to hers with a chilled water bottle in her hands, almost losing
her breath, as if she was afraid the heat might warm that water before she
would return. Then she wouldn’t be able to cool her small children, who were
waiting in the heat in a slum without a fan.
Since
that day, I never look at the ice cubes in my drink the same way I once did.
Ice cubes were just pieces of frozen water, until I saw that for some people,
even chilled water is a luxury! Ice cubes are a symbol of wealth and abundance
to me now.
I suddenly became grateful
for all the things I am blessed with in my life, even the small things, like
ice cubes, chilled water, nutritious food, a fan, an air-conditioner, mosquito
repellent in the night, clean running water in my home, electricity—not to
mention the “big” things, like an opportunity to get educated, to grow up in a
beautiful home, which was warm in winters and cool in summers, my job, the
power to choose my own husband.
I never thought I should
be grateful for choosing my husband. Yet, in a place where arranged marriages
are still tradition, I realized that it was a blessing that I was born and
raised in an environment where I could fall in love with a man and choose to
marry him.
Although arranged
marriages do work here, and I see people fall in love after marriage, or at
least create a relationship based on kindness, mutual respect, and care, I feel
so grateful every day that I had a chance to choose the man I thought was the
right for me, with my parents’ blessing and best wishes.
We often
take the things we have for granted, yet in many other parts of the world,
there are people who would feel blessed and happy if they could enjoy them on a
daily basis.
If we just take a look
around us we could find so many things to be grateful for.
Some of the practices that
can help us to cultivate the feeling of gratitude in our life include:
1. Gratitude journaling.
Keeping a gratitude
journal, where we note all the things (or at least three things) we feel
grateful for every day, can be a powerful reminder of how blessed we are.
Noting down even simple
things—like a delicious dinner we enjoyed, a warm home, a cup of tea or coffee,
time spent with our beloved—can be a powerful practice to keep us grounded in a
positive mindset on a daily basis.
2. Creating a list of possibilities and blessings.
It helps to write a list
of all the things we are blessed with, things we usually see as givens, that in
other parts of the world are not available to many people.
So many women around the
world still do not have the right or the opportunity to get educated, and so
many children cannot attend school or University due to lack of financial
resources. According to WHO, 12.9 percent of the world’s population (over 1
billion people) is undernourished and will probably go to bed hungry tonight.
Millions of people around
the world do not have an access to clean, running water and electricity, which
in Western countries we usually take for granted.
Having a roof over our
head, a warm room, a meal on our plate, a degree or opportunity to go to
University, electricity lighting our home, and cool water in summers are all
big reasons we can feel grateful every single day.
3. Shifting our perception.
Instead of feeling sad and
frustrated about being single, we can look at this same circumstance from
another perspective—as the freedom to be able to choose our partner and wait
until we find the right one. This simple shift can help us move from a negative
emotional state to a state of gratitude.
In the same way, we can
shift our perception of looking at other things, like the job that we don’t
like or our living conditions.
When we catch ourselves
complaining about housework, we can see it as a blessing that we have our own
home and, as a result, clean it with gratitude.
Instead of feeling annoyed
that we have to cook dinner, we can feel grateful that we’re able to afford
groceries. We can also consider it a blessing that, in this modern era, we do
not need to manually wash our dishes or clothes.
When we catch ourselves
complaining about the job we hate or feel bored with, we can feel grateful that
we have a job and regular income that can pay our bills.
We can also be grateful
for small things, like air conditioning in our office, having weekends off, or
the fact that we don’t need to be exposed to harsh weather conditions or safety
threats every day, like so many people in other corners in the world.
There’s nothing wrong with
trying to achieve more and move ahead in life, but we can never be truly happy
if we do not appreciate what we already have.
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