Gratitude

     I subscribe to the Sam Harris Meditation App.  On it, in addition to his daily meditations, he has short lessons on Life.  One such lesson is called Gratitude.  It was short, less than four minutes, but it is very inspiring.  It wasn't as if I hadn't given the subject a lot of thought before, but it did spark my interest again; thus, today's blog.
      The thing I find fascinating about gratitude, it can take you from entirely one state of mind to another, not only without any physical changes but with the very changes that caused the despair. Take an automobile accident for example. You have the unfortunate luck to be involved in an automobile accident with your family. You just bought a brand new car and it is demolished. But you are quick to notice neither you nor any of your family was seriously injured. I had such an incident happen to me. You have some bruises. Sure, you will have to deal with the insurance companies and the general aftermath nuisances.  Still, you are immersed in gratitude that no one was injured. Without invoking this attitude, this emotion, it would be an event that would cause utter despair.  Instead,  just thinking about what could have happened has moved you into a better place. Thinking otherwise not only exasperates the moment but says volumes of your misplaced priorities and attitudes that follow you daily in smaller and inevitable events.
     Now one does not have to have a mishap or near mishap in order to appreciate the virtue of gratitude. There is rarely a life that one cannot invoke gratitude on a daily basis. As Sam Harris puts it: "I think of all the things that haven't happen to me." Or has he bluntly put it:" There must be a billion people on earth that would trade places with you at this very moment." And right alongside gratitude is how relative happiness is and the illusion of need.
     Think how we have boxed ourselves in a corner with material acquisition and creature comforts in order to proclaim being happy. Take away our cell phones, air condition in cars and homes, cable TV, and Internet, and the prospect of being happy or grateful are diminished greatly,  if not eliminated for most people.  If "things" make us happy, how could anyone have been happy before those "things" existed? Yet, we know billions of people were happy before the advent of the present technology.  Perhaps, in many ways, happier. I am discounting medical and pharmacological advances that have promoted the well-being of billions of people and have reduced suffering. I am speaking of the guy who can't survive another day with his "archaic" phone that was just the latest in technology a decade ago and a century ago would have been looked upon as an unimaginable instrument of the future.
     The wealthiest people on earth just a century ago did not have anywhere near the medicine, dental, eye, or mental health care afforded even the poorest in this country today.  They had no flat-screen TVs, smartphones, or even an automobile that could outperform even the modest of today's models. Still, they were happy.
       Gratitude sparks the divine in all of us. It is a tool that gives us the power to ease or eliminated unnecessary suffering by putting things in their proper perspective. Use it well. Use it often. And you will have more to be grateful for.