Grateful for Things That Have Not Gone Wrong

Author Raja Krishnamoorthy / Kitty - Aug 18, 2024

“Are We Really Grateful for Things That Have Not Gone Wrong?” 

Okay, time to shake you up a bit! 

I really love Nick Peterson's concept of managing life by being grateful for things that have not gone wrong. 

I think this is a very important fact to recognize in our lives. If - by and large- life has been okay, if we have not encountered serious challenges—be it physical, emotional, financial, or intellectual—but if you're still feeling unhappy with life, I think we need a bit of a whacking on our backside. 

It's so very essential to recognize that our life has been on a safe track, maybe even an average track, but even that amount of security, safety, and solidness is a blessing of life. 

I'll just take two examples. 

1. The first one is of a larger canvas, the bigger issues of society. 

If you have to look at your life while reading this posting and then look around the world, you would realize how gifted you are to be safe, to be comfortable, to be intellectually exercising reading my posting. 

Imagine the plight of people who just a few weeks back in Wayanadu lost everything—their properties, their near and dear ones, some of them their own lives—completely uprooted in that catastrophe or in the deluging Uttarakhand. 

Look at what's happening in Gaza. 

I'm not taking any sides but just the sheer devastation due to the war— essentially a political conflict fundamentally coming out of extreme hate, distance, doubt about intentions, human communities polarized. 

Look at Ukraine: more than two years of raging war with hundreds if not thousands of soldiers killed. Where is it leading to? God alone knows. 

Look at what's exploding in England and Europe: tremendous anger by the local population because of what is seen as cultural occupation, a cultural divide being created

And here you are ! 

Sitting down and reading my post comfortably—maybe in your chair, maybe at your home comfort. None of these huge problems that I described have happened to you or me. 

Still, maybe we have enough things to complain about our political system. I have enough things to complain about the utterly mindless, inefficient third-rate management of the Chennai Corporation and the government in the way they are so foolishly managing the so-called water connections and sewage connections. 

Mindlessly they have just dug around 18 streets and roads all in one area.. There's no way you can enter any street with minimum comfort. 

How would any organized structural civic system or government system be so dumb and insensitive that they don't care an "F" about what's happening? 

But having said this, I'm still underlining —We are better off! 

We are alive; we are safe even if we are in marginal difficulty. 

I'm not a person who draws comparative satisfaction by looking at somebody's misery and then feeling that I'm okay. No, I'm not at all that kind of person. 

I'm very empathetic—I not only feel terrible but try to do whatever best I can physically, monetarily, emotionally, intellectually... I do act. 

But here I'm making a point: 

Can we look at our life and realize that whatever is okay about it itself is a gift? B. When I just look around nearer: at my domestic household and some known people. 

I know a person who was a home assistant- a supervisor who is 60-plus. In the last 10 years, he has lost his son and a daughter-in-law, a grandchild and has gone through severe family emotional challenges. 

I have yet another person—a bit of domestic help, separated from her husband for 16-plus years—who single-handedly has brought up her two children.

This year I'm so happy to note that her son has joined college to become a graduate in business management while her daughter is in 10th standard doing well academically as well as an athlete kabaddi 

player—all with a paltry income ranging between 20-25 thousand rupees a month for more than 16 years. 

Singularly this lady has been carrying on life with such determination—I salute her! 

They are all around us. Please, please...Think my dear friends! 

it's a great quality if your life is on a track which may look average but where major disasters have not taken place. 

I'm not for a moment advocating that you need to live an average life but as Nic would say—maybe just look at what are some things you can streamline to make it more efficient or consistent about your own life. 

If you look deeply enough maybe you'll see some amazing breakthrough points—the quality of what I call as the “1C plus 3D” : C stands for consistency while the 3Ds are devotion, discipline, and determination. 

I'll write separate postings on this but I think if you have this 1C plus 3D it’s possible to achieve significant breakthroughs in life. 

Till such time be grateful that things have not gone too bad in life. Love you guys; all the very best! 

In awareness & Love 

Raja Krishnamoorthy 

18-8-24: 10am; Chennai