Gratitude

To be grateful is to be happy.

My whole life, I’ve always viewed gratitude as an abstract concept. Something that all the adults around me seemed to preach.

In today’s culture of existential inferiority. We always feel less than, like we are not enough. It’s not easy, always seeing people that seem to have more. We’re always left with a feeling of emptiness, as though we’re lacking the latest lip gloss or device.

In a society, where we want everything, but don’t value anything, we’re left with a void. We feel empty. Like the glass that was once half full is now half empty.

We are a culture that complains. A culture that has lost out on what it means to want what you already have. But gratitude, like anything in this world is a practice we can bring back, a conscious choice we can choose to make.

When I was going through what seemed like the deepest trenches of sadness, there seemed to be an invisible force that kept me going - gratitude. Every night during this miserable time of life I would sit with myself and make a list of 5 things I truly felt grateful for. The rule I made for myself was that I could not repeat one thing twice. Slowly as the days went by, my gratitude list zoomed in on minute things that I didn’t notice before, things like the way the sun hit the water, or a simple plant I never really recognised. They went from really big things to really miniscule moments, and that transformed the way I started to look at my every day life. The sunrise was no longer the dread of another day, but rather a ray of hope, a reminder that with every passing sunrise, things would keep getting better.

In my opinion gratitude is the foundation of life, the rose tinted lens through which we view the world. It makes life worth living, turns the bad into beautiful.

When we practice being grateful, we realise that in every moment, no matter how mad sad or angry, there is hope, joy and love.

I truly believe that the only way we can get somewhere in life, is to appreciate where you currently are. To enjoy the journey, no matter how traumatic it seems in the moment. To be grateful is to fill your own cup, and to finally start viewing it as half full.

Because when you start appreciating life, life starts appreciating you.

By Sarah Makani