As it should be

I have a theory, we often take the people closest to us for granted because it is hard as humans to consistently be in the right frame of mind. To constantly sustain gratitude, love, and devotion. Why? Other emotions get in the way: anger, frustration, weariness.

I watched this series where a super-talented neurosurgeon suffered the loss of his wife, who was the perfect mother to the children, and, to honour her wishes, moved his family to the countryside to manage a small practice where he gave medical services for free. He did this because this was his way of being a better husband in death than he was when she was alive.

He kept beating himself up for not being a better husband, not making enough time when she needed it, blamed himself for her cheating on him since he neglected her emotionally most of the time. Eventually, he came to the reality that if he were given a second chance, he’d probably still live the same way and make the exact same choices. He was only able to appreciate this now because he had come to appreciate different things.

I compare this realisation to my reality in moments when I know I could have done better, yet find myself not doing enough or even up to the standard I intended to uphold. I say I appreciate what I have, the love I am privileged to experience, the vitality of my life, but I don’t always appreciate this in every waking moment.

Have you noticed how much you appreciate easy breathing when you have a blocked nose? How it feel like you took all those other moments for granted? How you recover and feel a profound sense of gratitude, only to later continue as normal until your next encounter with a stuffed nose, and the cycle continues.

The question is, at what point were you most grateful? Did the fact that you were not conscious of what you are grateful for allow you miss it? Or better still, is gratitude only relevant when it is done consciously?

It doesn’t matter what answer you find, the bottom line is, we all slip, we have days where we are immensely upbeat and grateful, we are retrospective and hopeful and days where all we have is spite, angst, comparison and maybe resentment and regrets. Days when we cannot seem to muster gratitude for anything.

Do moments like this make us ungrateful people?

I think not. If anything, it is a reminder of our humanity. How quickly we forget anything good or bad. How fast our perspective changes, how easily distracted we get, how many of our supposed thoughtful actions are just autopilot programming of comfort and routine. Sometimes, you don’t even mean to complain; you just do because that’s what the situation expects or what you have seen repeated in several other similar positions.

What is beautiful, though, is our ability to recalibrate, to drag ourselves back to meaningfulness through reflective endeavours. To self-correct almost as immediately as autocorrect. It is sometimes called repentance, to re-route when we realise we have missed the mark again.

This is as it should be. We will not be perfect in every moment, but we are capable of perfection holistically when we take conscious effort to readapt, relearn, and just generally do better as often as we are able.

Xoxo,

Dcconoissuer.