Substitute ‘I’ for ‘we’ and this is the point. It seems that it is only when we don’t have (it) any longer that we realize what we had and rue our lack of appreciation at the time. It is so true and, for me, extremely pervasive. And it infiltrates every part of our lives. If you are one of the rare people who is aware at the time and appreciate what you have when you have it – I do envy you. This ‘loss’ can be people, health, wealth, work, and any other untold ‘its’. For me, my lack tends more often to be people who populated my life but there are also those accouterments like well being, funds, health, etc.
Savor the moment! That’s what we need to do and improve our ‘expertise’ in this quality… at least I do. When you do savor the moment then you can look back/reminisce without regret. And yes, there are some of those memories too – love sharing and enjoying them. Since you can’t undo what didn’t happen, to focus on the mistakes of not savoring accomplishes little. Still, we do it. The ‘why didn’t I…’ (fill in the blank) is futile because you won’t be able to. Still, we do it. But saying that it’s only human is the lamest reason I can think of… still… we do it.
What we need to do is to learn to be more intentional about the right now and be aware of what happens. For all of our ‘living in the moment’ philosophy, most of us don’t. Oh, we do to a degree – but total involvement is rare. But our level of awareness can increase. ‘How’ we then choose to use it is a totally different issue. Whatever our decision, that needs to be our personal operational definition – how we choose to be aware, to appreciate what we have when we have it. Just don’t complain.
There are so many people and ‘things’ that seem to only pass through our lives. We can’t hold onto them, regardless of how much we try, we can only appreciate who and how they impact our lives. While it may be understandable to regret not having our senses tuned to appreciation, if we didn’t, the point is… we didn’t. Lamenting what we didn’t do can be turned into appreciation what did happen at that time.
… but, what do you think?
