Gratitude is usually about appreciating all that we have.
What if, to take gratitude further, we appreciated all that we didn’t have, too?
Things like:
This exercise will at least 100x your gratitude list.
Not that it needed any extending in the first place.
My dog plays with her toys until she gets bored.
And then she could care less about them.
It’s only when I take one of them away that she suddenly cares again.
And cares a whole lot.
We are so much the same.
We don’t really care about what we have until it’s gone.
If only we could enjoy what we have like it was already taken, maybe we wouldn’t have to get things taken before we could truly enjoy.
We instinctually want what we don’t have.
This is true even for those who already have what we want.
It’s one big circle of everybody wanting everybody else’s stuff.
You want mine; I want yours; we want theirs; they want ours.
Until we decide that what we have is what we want.
It’s only then that we may finally break the vicious circle.
The feelings we crave the most are connected to the feelings that hurt us the most.
The desire to feel:
The feelings that pain us are like emotional wounds and the opposite feelings act like the remedy.
Possessions are like band-aids—they only temporarily cover up wounds. And they do nothing to address the pain itself.
If we want to truly heal, then we need to do the same kind of work that our body would when wounded. We need to:
The bottom line: the intensity of our desire for pleasurable feelings is proportional to the intensity of our painful feelings. The more we heal our pains, the less we will need those remedies disguised as opposing feelings.
And we’ll finally be able to rip all the band-aids off.
Why do people really want the possessions they do?
I can tell you straight away it isn’t because of the possessions themselves.
In fact, in most cases, what people really want is to feel a certain kind of way.
And getting that possession, in their mind, is how they feel it.
People want to feel impressive so they buy the new iPhone.
People want to feel cool so they buy the Gucci slides.
People want to feel admired so they buy the BMW.
The problem, of course, with buying things in order to acquire feelings is two fold:
That’s why, the real game isn’t about acquiring the most expensive possessions.
The real game is about learning how to acquire the feelings in spite of the expensive possessions.
Because while band-aids have their role, they should never be prioritized over the main goal: healing—so that band-aids are no longer needed at all.
Sitting outside on a beautiful day the sun warms my skin as the wind playfully rushes by and in one cool sweeping grasp steals it before I can act It is then in but the span of a moment that I feel nothing neither warm nor cool not wind nor sun and my skin is dissolved into the world as the entirety of the world is dissolved into my skin How curious that I am reminded in but the span of a moment that stasis can be found maybe not permanently but in the spaces in between Where nothing is triggering but nothing is comforting either when wind finally arrives and sun touches down once again where all forces momentarily pause and take much needed rest before rushing again quickly to wherever they need to be next