The practice of gratitude may be one of the best ‘enhancers’ we can find. I know it runs two risks in the way such a claim is perceived: one is that it is ‘religious’; the other that it belongs to a middle-aged or elderly view of things. It may well be that the best insights of our various religions have come to see its value as an orientation and attitude; and ditto with the wise-older amongst us. So what?
If I want everything then what I do possess will always show a deficit against that target; if I see all as gift (life, senses, other people, what possessions I have, and the fact of the universe, this planet, its without-which-we-would-not-be here Sun) then the formula behind the equation becomes a positive, a credit.
When all things are viewed from this perspective, gratitude seems to spring up and change how we experience things. Certain ‘I wants’ transform into ‘I haves’, though the condition this brings about (it seems to me) is better described as ‘we haves’, since the all-dominant I appears, too, to undergo some welcome change in this marvellous alchemy.
If I want everything then what I do possess will always show a deficit against that target; if I see all as gift (life, senses, other people, what possessions I have, and the fact of the universe, this planet, its without-which-we-would-not-be here Sun) then the formula behind the equation becomes a positive, a credit.
When all things are viewed from this perspective, gratitude seems to spring up and change how we experience things. Certain ‘I wants’ transform into ‘I haves’, though the condition this brings about (it seems to me) is better described as ‘we haves’, since the all-dominant I appears, too, to undergo some welcome change in this marvellous alchemy.