Spiritual Appreciation

When was the last time you looked at a sunset and appreciated its beauty? The purples, reds, and oranges that intermingled and glowed while dancing across the horizon as the sun sank from view?

When was the last time you bowed your head and simply faced an empty room and said to no one in particular, “thank you for giving me another day to face and get through.”

We Americans and probably most of the known Western world has a tendency to take things for granted. To know inside that whatever we possess will be there the next day. We know that we’ll have enough to eat, wear the clothes we buy from the mall, or have a roof over our heads.

The same thing is said for ‘spiritual appreciation.’ Do we ever internally thank our lucky stars that we have everything we need and know that they’ll be there the next day to be counted out without thought or regard to, “what would happen if?”

I don’t believe many of us say thank you spiritually. We seem to take for granted that things will remain the same for us whatever happens because it has always been that way.

I know from personal experience not to count on that type of spiritual philosophy. I know from experience that each day stands on its own merit. That we should realize that things happen whether for a specific reason or randomly.

We tend to gloss over the facts when presented with them. However, when you speak to the elder generation, the ones who lived through the last great war, War World II, you get a certain feeling that you really don’t appreciate what you have…until you’ve lost it.

For example in the Netherlands, one woman told me of eating tulips for breakfast, lunch, and dinner because that’s all her family had to eat during the war. Another woman told me of how her father, a doctor, collected payments in chickens, cows, roosters, eggs, anything that a farmer could produce. Her father accepted because of rationing.

I don’t know about you. All I can say is that as that each day goes by, I silently give thanks to the great universe and beyond. I thank the universe for allowing me to live another day, and to get by with my own form of survival, experience, and tough love.

It’s a difficult and dark world we’re living in this century. I know that I do pay attention to sunsets and to the little things that happen by me. I know that life is precious and one shouldn’t take it for granted.

How do I know this?

Let’s just say that ‘trouble’ isn’t given to you unless the great universe believes that you’re tough enough to handle it.

Until next time… .