Life: Don’t Take It For Granted

Dedicated to Napolin.  RIH.

As I’ve shared with you all a few times before, by trade, I work in customer service. (I’ve also shared how very badly that job gets on my nerves, but I digress.)  The very first call that I answered today was from a woman who was a front desk agent at a hotel in Florida.  She was making accommodations for a family who had gone through a terrible ordeal just hours before she contacted me.

Here’s What Happened

A family of four; a mother, father, and two young daughters, as well as the family pets (a dog and a caged cat) was traveling home to Texas from Florida after they had spent the last several days on vacation.  As they were driving down the interstate, the father (who was driving) looked away for a split second.  That split second caused him to lose control of the vehicle.  While trying to get back on course and continue his trek home, he overcorrected and that caused him to hit another car and flip his vehicle (it rolled a few times).  The family’s dog, which they have had for years, was thrown from the vehicle as was killed by an oncoming semi truck.  As for the rest of his family, everyone survived — UNSCATHED! The father suffered an achey leg and some minor abrasions.  Even the cat survived!

I sat at my desk and I listened to this story.  Even though I hated to hear about what that family had gone through that morning, and I could never imagine how they must have felt at that time, I smiled — BIG! Why? Because they are all alive, and able.  People have had far less impactful accidents and didn’t make make it out alive, or suffered life changing, permanent injuries.  But, this family — the mother, the father, and the two little girls had literally walked away from their accident.  I’m sure that they knew how blessed they are for things to have gone the way they had gone.  I believe that they were saved for something special.  Obviously, their mission isn’t complete yet.  Maybe someone who was in that car will make a positive difference in the world.  One or all of them have a huge calling; we’ll have to wait and see.  Maybe their lives were spared so they could tell their story and inspire others to appreciate their lives.  Or, maybe they who took their lives for granted and the accident was the Universe’s way showing them how precious their lives really are.

Gratitude

Oddly enough, as I dressed for work this morning, I thought out loud, “I wonder how many people actually take the time to appreciate, and be grateful for the air?  If one day it goes away, we all die“.  Most people would probably consider that to be a small thing, but it’s really not.  We need air to stay alive, and it’s always there for us (even though we treat it pretty badly).

Later, towards the end of my shift, my daughter contacted me to tell me that a high school friend of hers was killed today in a motorcycle accident.  All of these incidents inside of one 24 hour period has to have some kind of meaning.  They didn’t “just happen“.  The sequence as well as the actual events themselves are messages and/or lessons.  Maybe there’s message in this for me, personally.  Or, maybe these things were brought to my attention so I would write this blog to remind you all to be grateful for every atom and particle of your lives.  And to never take for granted that something is “a given“, nothing is “a given“.  You don’t have to have any of the things that you have.  It can all be taken away in far less time than it took for you to accumulate it.

Don’t stop at being grateful and acknowledging that how ever good or bad your life is, you don’t have to have it; show your gratitude by being gratuitous. Love, give, care, help.  Send that kind of vibe into the Universe and watch it expand.  When you are grateful, appreciative, and happy, you glow.  Others can see those positive traits in you.

Be Happy

Most humans who claim  to be unhappy  feel that way because they’re looking for happiness.  They spend their time looking for someone, something, or somewhere that will make them happy.  Should they chance upon the happiness that they think they want, it’s only temporary.  They just keep bouncing from thing to thing because they really don’t know what will make them happy.  I can speak at length about this because I lived it for years.  I couldn’t stick to anything because I was so unhappy that I didn’t know what I really wanted, or what would make me happy.  That kind of mindset and behavior can never be conducive to expressions of gratefulness to the Universe.  At that point, I was taking my life for granted.

What I didn’t understand was that I would never find happiness if I didn’t know what I was looking for.  How could I identify something that I had never seen?  When I started working on myself from the inside out, things began to change — I began to change.  I had found what makes me happy — and I stuck with it (and right now, you’re reading it.)  I started making plans for continued happiness.  It all started with me.

Take Inventory

Happiness does not start off as an external emotional.  It always starts on the inside, and it works it’s way to the outside.  For me, it was looking at what I have and being happy that I have it.  It’s not all that I want out of life, but what I have is mine — I can build from it. I also realized that there are things about me that are not only valuable to me, but valuable to others as well.  I’m grateful for my talents, as they are now, and for what they will become.  I appreciate being appreciated.  I’m grateful that I have people to love and appreciate.  I’m grateful for every relationship, romantic or otherwise, that I’ve ever had with anyone — even the ones that went terribly wrong.  Those experiences were contributive to my evolution, so I’m a better person because of all of the bullshit that I’ve dealt with.  THANK YOU!

Once I began to take inventory of everything I have, I began to exude happiness without even knowing that I was.  I take inventory everyday, and I thank The Source for everything, everyday.  Sure, I still have melancholy days, and there are days when I am discouraged — those are human emotions, and it’s okay to experience them.  However, I never allow myself to stay there.  Even though it took time, and it wasn’t easy, I had stopped searching for happiness.  Instead, I decided to be happy.  Apparently, taking that stance made me vulnerable to happiness, because it found me.

Life Is Precious!

Being happy with yourself is the genesis of being grateful and gratuitous.  When you learn all of the thousands of reasons why you, and your life is amazing, it will be impossible for you to take it for granted.  As proven in the beginning paragraphs of this article: Life is precious.  Life is a miracle. Don’t take it for granted, because it can all be gone —  just like that.

“Every life is precious.  Not just yours or mine, but every single person on the planet who’s breathing, their life is precious.  And the loss of another life, even in Oz, is my loss too.”

~Tobias Beecher, “Oz”

Subscribe to Afrologik on Youtube by clicking here!