Gratitude - a practice or a feeling!
Recently I have started reading a book "Bhagavad-gita As It Is". Not that I have not read Gita earlier, I have been listening to it since my childhood. In those days, my grandmother used to recite it every day, and she would do it in a loud manner, stating that when I do this, the last thing would be you guys will hear at least something of it, if not the entire thing. So, every day when she would recite, she would sit at a place from where everyone could hear her. In short, we all have heard Gita mostly that way only. Folks who do not know what book am referring to can check this link.
You might be thinking why have a started reading it now? Well, I always wanted to read it (though I have read the shorter version of it earlier, this one is an elaborated one), and I was unable to finish the regular genre that I read, hence I started with something like this!
While reading, and of course have been watching similar stuff one thing I came across the most was "Gratitude". Gratitude for anything and everything we have in life. Everyone, in this world, all these speakers talks about feeling gratitude or showing gratitude. I was always fascinated with this term, and could never understand how much gratitude to show or how to show in the first place! Nor did I get any specific answer to it ever. Based on my limited intellect and understanding, I started following a few basic principles:
- Say thank you and sorry as much as you can. Nobody becomes smaller by saying these words
- Say thank you, even for the things where you know the other person is just doing her/his own duty
- Say thank you, for the things that didn't happen
- Say thank you, for the things that you wished for, but were not granted to you
- Say thank you, for all the good, bad, or worst experiences you have
- Say, thank you, every morning, for being able to breathe, see, feel, hear, speak, eat, and swallow.
- Say, thank you for your patience, instead of saying sorry for the delay, etc., etc.
Once it happened, when I started following, I said thank you to my mom, for passing on a thing to me, and people around actually made fun of this. And I wondered what did I do or said that made them do so. Later on, I realized that people take most things for granted, and when someone actually starts acknowledging such "taken for granted things" and appreciates them, most of us do not understand.
Let's try a few things:
- Try saying thank you to your cook or house help, and see the bright smile on their face, and the feeling of contentment it brings to you
- Try saying thank you to the security guard for being there
- Try saying thank you to the office boy, whose job is to ensure the drinking water supply is upto the mark
- Try saying thank you to your teammates for doing their job
- Try saying thank you to someone who is just doing their job, and will still continue doing the same without you saying thank you,
I think enough of gyaan! I didn't plan this post to be a gyaan one, but more on how am i trying to process things with myself.
Cheers
Khushi