The power of gratitude

 

Passing through a poor locality in Delhi is always revealing. To feel gratitude for whatever God has given us, we ought to visit slums and pavements crowded with the homeless people. Then we realize how lucky we have been in receiving all that God has given us. To feel gratitude for whatever body type God has graced us with, thus blessing us with a vehicle to complete this phase of journey, sometimes visit the hospitals and see the sick and diseased. It helps us in feeling thankful for whatever Almighty has gifted us in the name of physicality.

A little kid, barely seven or eight, comes pulling the rickshaw carrier. Empty plastic cans at the back and the little lad going almost half way down on each side to complete the paddling circle. There are more child bread earners washing dirty plates by a kulche chhole stall. It is early in the morning and instead of getting breakfast before going to school they are earning their bread. The littlest of kids taking a bath at a public tap after a late night stint at an eating point. The childhood has withered in them. They are old before they realize. These are dhaba boys. Getting their skins hardened with heartless, unsympathetic, antisocial strains; fed by the scorns and abuses of their merciless masters. Watching them makes us feel so privileged in having parents who saved us from all this experience, who gave us schooling, shelter and made us free enough to pursue our journey.

Watching the miseries around should open us to kindness. But it should open the floodgates of gratitude also for whatever we have received just by being born in relatively better circumstances. If you have a personal jet, watch people who have just cars. If you have a car, feel the struggle of those having just bikes. If you have a bike, feel the test someone is going through in just having a bicycle. If you have a bicycle, see the homeless walker who hasn’t anything at all. If you ever feel sorry for your poor footwear, feel the pain of someone who hasn’t got even legs to wear even the cheapest footwear. And millions will die today over the globe. So feel privileged to have this sip of life under the fresh sunshine.

Gratitude is very-very important. Without it we cannot groom self-love. And without the foundations of self-love we face a lot of challenge in building the citadel of love for others. All of us know it theoretically but we forget it easily. To make gratitude an essential element of our daily life we ought to look below as well, daily, to make it a habit. Look above daily to remember the impermanence of life by watching the shifting and melting clouds. And daily look below to feel gratitude for the great boons we have received during this interval between birth and death. There are messages written around. Aha, the master book of life! The codes of the ultimate reality are written so clearly for everyone to read. Happy watching above and below—daily!