Not a single thing in this world is self-made. What we are today or what we will become tomorrow will all be possible only with help and obligations from others. It can easily be imagined that without others’ help we will not be able to sustain even our day-to-day activities. Wind, water, earth, sun- without any one of these our life will cease to exist within few minutes. The vegetation, animals, and humans all provide us help in innumerable ways. We are indebted to them forever. To an ungrateful eye, these favors will either go unnoticed or unappreciated.
We normally look at these favors from two perspectives. One perspective is to think about favors received as a part of duty of benefactors. Another way to think about the obligation received as magnanimity on the part of our benefactor and the recipient not only recognizes the favors but also perceives its load on his heart and has a strong desire to pay back this debt.
Both options are at our disposal, it is our choice to choose one point of view over the other. But
results will vary based on the choice.
Adopting the former approach where favors are perceived as duty; home, family, society, work, and inner life will all feel burdensome, lacking harmony, the relation among them would feel vacuum, any and all of these social structures will always come up short of meeting ones’ expectations, one would be in a constant state of being critical of one thing or the other; it will be a very sad state of affairs as such thoughts will ruin one’s life; sucking out all positivity and focusing entirely on the negativity.
The latter approach is where favors are considered as debt and have the desire to repay the favors. Such an approach will result in looking for opportunities to reciprocate; it will pave the way to return the favor by being gracious, thankful, and respectful towards the giver; in turn the accumulation of such feelings, thoughts and actions will lead to a very pleasant and wonderful view full of positivity emanating from the individual.
Clearly, a grateful heart pursues the latter point of view and this approach can cause a start of a
new era in one’s life.
The Need for Gratitude
