June 2016, the year I lost my grandfather, was the time which made me regret and feel terrible. He was my role model and a great teacher. I had so much to thank him for, appreciate him for his constant efforts and showering unconditional love on me.
That’s when I realised and felt the old adage, “dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because the regret is stronger than gratitude.” We often take the people in our lives for granted and do not be grateful for having them in our lives and for their deeds.
We push it on to the future. This feeling and need of being vocal about your thoughts and feelings towards others became even more stronger after the recent loss of actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
The way people tweeted, posted, grieved and shared their regretful thoughts just made me think, why is it so hard for us to be grateful? Why does someone`s death make us realise their importance?
As it’s said, ‘experience is the teacher of all things’. It was after my personal loss I realised the importance and power of gratitude. But I don’t want others to learn after losing their dear ones. This article is my attempt on spreading the message and significance of ‘Power of Gratitude’.
“Just wanted to say thank you.”
“I’m so proud of you and all your accomplishments.”
When was the last time you admired your family members, friends and acquaintances, business partners and collaborators? When was the last time you called up your dear ones and thanked them for sticking around you? When was the last time you thanked a stranger for a kind gesture?
2020, the year full of misfortunes and distress, has also been a period of realizations and learnings. Often or not we tend to let things pass or be as they are assuming that we will address it later in life. We tend to let go the thought of thanking, appreciating, cherishing the deeds done by others.
This unforeseen pandemic has resulted in loss of many lives; relatives, friends, or colleagues. The feeling of not being able to talk to them and the regret of not telling them what they mean to us, how much we loved them, is just overwhelming and unimaginable.
This very period dawned on me, that we take people for granted. If we tell people and make them aware of how we feel about them probably it would have made their lives better.
Recent incident that strikes my mind is the death of Sushant Singh Rajput. Had his colleagues, co-stars, friends, his near and dear ones spoken to him, acknowledged his art and praised him for his laurels then, the regret they probably have now wouldn’t be the same. Probably, there would have been a good chance that he would still be alive today.
As our life continues apace, people live today with an emotional wreak. Time and again, their stress levels are high. This becomes a hindrance to their normal day-to-day functioning.
Amidst all the anguish and pain, imagine receiving a “well done” or “thank you” message from your beloved ones. Wouldn’t that boost your confidence? Wouldn’t it make you feel wanted? Won’t that just put a smile on your face?
“Feeling gratitude and not expressing is like wrapping a gift and not giving it away”. Humans have a natural, strong desire for appreciation.
In a way, recognising and applauding, and being made aware of it, is letting them know that they matter, and that their efforts actually amount to something. Practicing an attitude of gratitude does not only spread positivity but also increases the feeling of optimism and contentment.
It’s really easy to allow our grumblings, constant complaining and whining about possessions take over our blessings and offerings received. Plentiful of our time and energy is spent run after and chasing things we currently don’t have.
Whether it’s the materialistic things we desire for or our life or the ones part of it, everything is a blessing no matter how small the thing is or what kind of people you come across. When you consider every single thing you have and the number of individuals who were involved in making it happen, do you have a choice but to be thankful?
I happened to miss out on a chance to say thank you once and I would do anything to find that person and show my appreciation towards him. Let me tell you how it went down. For executing his photoshoot, my friend had me stand between two opposite lanes on the road with my chin down and wearing black from head to toe.
This started to look peculiar when he stood behind me with a huge camera in his hand to take the shot.
Seeing this, a stranger moving in speed, stopped his bike only to check if I was fine. I gave him the indication that all is fine and before I could thank him he left. This act of his made me feel the presence of humanity and I would have felt much better if I would have gotten time to show my gratitude.
They say, “Count your blessings, not your problems.” But we humans have tendency to count our problems and keep getting upset over the smallest things possible. We have a tendency to make mountains out of molehills. We focus so much on the problem that it appears larger than what may actually be true.
The more we focus on what we do not have the more dissatisfied with life we become. But if we shift this focus and turn our attention to all the goodness that already exists in our life we begin to see things we had not noticed before and feel more appreciative of our life. Counting our blessings puts us into a state of gratitude which opens the flow to attract more happiness and abundance into our lives.
So let it be a just the simplest of thing like a verbal expression or kind gesture or even a smile. Don’t hesitate to say it or make the gesture. Not only does it make the other person happy it also affects you in a way you don’t always realise. Being grateful makes you value what you have even more. It makes you feel happy and satisfied in the person you are.
Keeping the attitude of gratitude will help you, you cannot fathom. When people learn to appreciate the littlest of good things, the largest of bad things won’t be able to affect them and I think that’s the best way to live life.
Appreciating someone may not be a big thing for you. But for a person who’s having a bad day, a person who is has nothing right going on for him, a person who is filled with the problems he might be facing. Your one gesture could turn his day around, could give him hope, could give him the positivity he deserved and I believe that’s a much worthy endeavour.
So to conclude I’d like to take my time to thank you for giving your time to my thoughts and I just want to say, the power of gratitude goes a long way and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.
– Riya Nathe
