Life Is Short, Don’t Ever Take It For Granted
One of the greatest errors of human nature is the complacency that comes with familiarity.
Don’t Take This Life For Granted – Inspirational Speech:
We see a spectacular sunset one evening and find it breathtaking, but were we to see the same sunset night after night, it would somehow lose it’s magic. We fall madly in love with someone, but over time we begin to see more flaws in our beloved, than beauty.
We awaken every morning with our lungs filled with fresh, clean air, a full 24 hours to live in a functioning body on an incredibly beautiful planet, but as we have done it so many times before, we assume it will happen again. Over time, waking up loses its novelty, and instead of feeling like a miracle it becomes a chore. We take it for granted.
The biggest tragedy that lies in taking things (or people) in life for granted is that we usually become aware of what we had only once it’s gone. How often do we skip over life’s most precious moments only to lament over them later? It is a tragic and seemingly never ending cycle.
There is however, one simple and profound way to stop the habit of taking things for granted: Living in the present moment.
The only reason that we adopt complacency towards the beauty that surrounds us is that we are we are caught up in our minds and therefore fail to actually see it.
Rather than being in the moment, we are often too busy thinking about the next place we have to be, or what we are going to eat for lunch or what someone said to us a day, a week, a month or even a year ago! All of this mental chatter pulls us away from the beauty that lies in the present, and causes us to become disgruntled and unappreciative. We lose touch with our gratitude and we end up taking things for granted, almost by accident.
When we are in this state we become blind to life.
The good news is that by becoming conscious of what you are doing, where you are and what is in your environment right NOW, i.e. by practicing mindfulness, you become immediately present and therefore open to receive all of the gifts that are before you. Instead of being stuck in your mind, you now have the opportunity to receive life as it is.
When you are open like this, you are then able to allow the only true and accurate state of awareness to come to you; complete and total gratitude.
The things you take for granted, someone else is praying for.
When you are fully present in your life, you never miss a sunset because you are too busy, because the colours stop you in your tracks. When you are present in your life, your beautiful body becomes an incredible gift beyond your wildest dreams, and your beloved becomes more and more amazing as each moment passes. Because when you are present, you see the truth: Life is short, fleeting and impermanent. You will never be as young as you are today. There will never be another moment just like this one. Ever.
So if you are feeling down and out, or you feel like nothing good ever happens to you, you might want to reassess your judgment. Perhaps your life is amazing after all, you have just been missing it.