What are you grateful or ungrateful for?
Well…grateful for completing a revolution round the sun🤭
Being grateful; simply meaning thankfulness. Some may believe that gratitude is a state of being (inside), and I would need more education on how that would be; I say gratitude must be accompanied with action and the first action would be to look outside yourself. It’s very easy to be grateful in the happy times, right? So, it requires no persuasion there and that’s a beautiful thing. If you find yourself ungrateful even in good times, sorry, you have a bigger problem, I think. You may need to also read my posts on Nihilism and Solution to Nihilism.
Why do we suffer ingratitude? Ignorance of history/past events leading to the present, or of what’s going on around us? Does our suffering lead us into ingratitude? Or vice versa?
Someone said: “Look at it this way; in the end you have a choice, all of us do. You can suffer all your problems ( death, health, malevolence, financial etc.) with gratitude or choose to be bitter and resentful on top of your suffering.” What’s the point of that? Take a look around you, and again I ask, what are you grateful for?
Please do not think I’m advocating for lying to yourself as it’s very possible and dangerous. Deceiving oneself is easy and many people do it very successfully. I mean, why not? It’s easy to get things with minimal effort, you will escape responsibility and accountability, pain and anxiety. However, what happens when the day comes and you’re called upon to use you mental faculty to make a crucial judgement? If you’ve warped your mind in lies you will not be able to recognize truth or wisdom to make this judgement- Jordan B Peterson.
Let us all own and steer our own misery and hopelessness! Along with all that we have to be grateful for, of course!
There was a story told by a first century Rabbi, the one and only Jesus of Nazareth:
Once upon a parable, there was a man who owed 10,000 talents to a king (1 talent was equivalent to 6000 denarii and 1 denarius was equivalent to about 1 day’s work). This was an impossible debt to pay so he and his family were to be ‘sold’ together with all he had to make the payment. So he begged on his knees for mercy and patience saying that he will pay the debt in time. The king had mercy and forgave him the debt.
One day the same man went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii. He seized him and chocked him telling him to pay what he owed him. The fellow pleaded and begged for patience saying that he will pay in time. Guess what? He refused and put him in prison until he should pay him back. Personally, I’ve never understood this policy because, how should he make money while in prison? This was all happening in the presence of other fellows; who were very distressed by this and understandably went to report this to their king. His king and master summoned him and said to him, “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?” In anger, he threw him in jail until he pays his debt. Serves him right, right? How many times have you and I been ‘him’?
The story is from the Bible (ESV); Mat 18:21,
This story, on the surface, teaches me how an ungratefulness can easily lead to unforgiveness, lack of mercy and patience (we’ll pass over the deeper meaning of the story today). Gratefulness is the one scale I love to weigh my life upon. There are many moments in suffering that I forget and start to complain, but once my mental bell of gratefulness rings, the burden becomes lighter and I certainly become less resentful. If only we could be each other’s bell…
If you could, please share something you’re grateful for in the discussion.
“Be the foreigner, and only leper, that went back to say thank you.”
-Just me
Thank you for reading. Click below ⬇️⬇️⬇️ to also explore
Solution to Nihilism
Nihilism: Meaning/meaningless of life