Relying on Gratefulness




I've been spending some time thinking about an everyday binary: happy and/or unhappy. It's a frustrating gauge because the measure of this binary is too small. It's scope of understanding, too limited. In a moment, the lack of depth of each word makes it too easy to define your situation as either one or the other. If asked how one feels, and if honest, it's easy to say I'm unhappy and feel wrong for feeling so. Or in the opposite, I'm happy, but then lose that happiness soon after, and feel at a loss as to why one could not maintain the feeling. It does not hold weight. It's measure is fleeting. It sells short what it means to live.

However, I think a binary of a better quality is that of grateful and ungrateful. In a moment it is easy to be unhappy. And similarly so, just as easy to be happy. But even in that moment, no matter how happy or unhappy, if asked if one is grateful, then one must look back and really take a full inventory of what one has experienced and the richness of those experiences alike. That is the measure of a life. A life that is looked back upon and then and only then can it really be measured. Not in a matter of inches or temporary degrees but in the measure of a life that has been lived. And therein, you can judge yourself, with an honest temperature. And from then on out always challenge yourself to continue to rely on gratefulness.


-Remoy
Remoy Philip