Day 009

#100Days

Figured out yesterday that there is Mardown support for this platform (yay!). Did so accidentally while adding the hashtag in the article.

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Found an interesting feature that characterizes well the age we're living in: ingratitude.

Many people talk about gratitude and being grateful for things we have in life, like friends, family, health, wealth, food, shelter, water, freash air, etc.

I've already wrote a bit about gratitude earlier, and today I'd like to mention its opposing behaviour and talk a bit of its structure.

I noticed that people, like me, tend to consider themselves to possess some degree of self-importance. Think of self-importance as a human trait (not a flaw): people have different levels of self-importance.
Do not confuse self-importance with self-care, or self-love. These two mean that you prioritize your well being on circumstances where it would be damaged. Self-care does not include violence or malevolence against others.

Self-importance leads us to undervalue situations, people, deeds, etc. It blinds us from seeing beauty in a arguably good portion of our lives. Being self-important would lead me, for instance, to ignore, or undervalue the good things I have in my life because I would take them for granted, for example. Or I could underappreciate an effort from a friend or colleague, just because I feel super important, and am not willing to pay enough attention.

A good example just happened today, I could see how much I used to underestimate the good things people do to me, their efforts in providing me small moments of joy, care, love, or kindness of any sort.

Self-importance can lead me to I think I deserve more.

It is not about being satisfied or not. But instead of taking the time to appreciate and demonstrate that appreciation to a person, people would just raise the bar of their own personal requirements or needs.

It's very easy to just increase the bar over time. And by doing so, people start to get grumpier. This does not produce any good in the world. Looking at the seeds we sow when we are in those states of mind, we can see the quality of the harvest we have ahead.