Thankfulness
How do we act with true gratefulness?
Being thankful and grateful is hard to do sometimes. We see so much suffering in the world around us we think that life is pointless and take it for granted. Life is definitely a pain in the butt sometimes, but someone always has it worse than you. One way to be grateful is to realize how good you have it. No doubt there are first world problems that come with everything in the western world, but look at parts of Asia and Africa where children literally starve. How can we be thankful to a deity or deities (depending on the religion) that look at the world with such apathy?
One way we can be thankful is to try and help those impoverished parts of the world. Basically a good way to be grateful is to not be selfish. We have multiple organizations that look after people in impoverished parts of the world. One.org is an example. As the governments of these impoverished countries can be corrupt, it's important that we don't give the governments money but that the common citizens get food, shelter, water, and money.
Another way to be thankful is to say it. The words "Thank You" can leave impact on the people that serve us every day. Sometimes they don't hear those words ever, sometimes they hear the opposite.
The number one way that we show thankfulness though is through giving back to the ones who have given. We need to remember those whom we are indebted to.
Thoughts?
Being thankful and grateful is hard to do sometimes. We see so much suffering in the world around us we think that life is pointless and take it for granted. Life is definitely a pain in the butt sometimes, but someone always has it worse than you. One way to be grateful is to realize how good you have it. No doubt there are first world problems that come with everything in the western world, but look at parts of Asia and Africa where children literally starve. How can we be thankful to a deity or deities (depending on the religion) that look at the world with such apathy?
One way we can be thankful is to try and help those impoverished parts of the world. Basically a good way to be grateful is to not be selfish. We have multiple organizations that look after people in impoverished parts of the world. One.org is an example. As the governments of these impoverished countries can be corrupt, it's important that we don't give the governments money but that the common citizens get food, shelter, water, and money.
Another way to be thankful is to say it. The words "Thank You" can leave impact on the people that serve us every day. Sometimes they don't hear those words ever, sometimes they hear the opposite.
The number one way that we show thankfulness though is through giving back to the ones who have given. We need to remember those whom we are indebted to.
Thoughts?
Comments (4)
Quoting MountainDwarf
Yes, that's the heart of it.
As for the organizations that look after the poor in the world... They try. That's something. NGOs do good work in many cases, but they are grossly insufficient. Their efforts are garden hoses where an Amazon River is needed. Even governments like the US, Europe, or China can't solve the problems of the world's poor, because there are, for one thing, too many people and there isn't enough to go around. There is less to go around because North America, Europe, and China/Japan (the industrialized G20 countries) get most of what there is, and we aren't going to give it up. I don't want to give up my share, you probably don't either, so there we are.
But still, gratitude is a good thing and a lot of us have a great deal to be grateful, thankful, for.
By living un-harmingly, considerately and peacefully..
This universe is only one of infinitely many possibility-worlds, and this life is only one of infinitely-many life-experience possibility-stories. And because i claim that those consist only of abstract facts, they have an insubstantiality, etherealness, open-ness and lightness quite contrary to what Materialism would imply.
And life is only one form of experience, along with sleep, and deep sleep--nightly, and welcomly and deservedly at the end of lives. ...the peace, contentment, un-needfulness and completeness that is the background of the eventful, risky life-experience possibility-stories.
So, isn't there a feeling of something to be grateful for?
Worlds and lives aren't safe, but, for whatever reason, we needed or wanted one, or were in some way subconsciously inclined or pre-dispossed toward one. And, once in life, we're not done till we're done. ...till we've satisfactorily completed it.
(It happens to be the nature of this particular societal world that we're in, that its completely rock-bottom degenerate rulers have a stranglehold on it, and on its other inhabitants. That's just the way it is. A famous person once said, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's". The rulers own this societal world, this planet, really, and they think that they've won, because they think that this world is all that there is.)
Sorry to end on a negative note, so disregard that paragraph, because this life and this world aren't all that there is.
Michael Ossipoff
Well, simply put, we recognize moral virtues when we percieve them, and recognize the unique, morally positive conditions we are in.