The tragedy of a lack of gratitude is that we often miss the miracle by focusing on the trivial. -Ryan Fahey
While flying from London to Canada back in December this concept really hit home for me. While midway over the Atlantic Ocean, I realized that it is truly a miracle that we can be sitting in a tin tube while flying 35,000 feet above frigid water that would kill you from hypothermia after about 12 minutes exposure. In that moment, I realized I was giving the trust of my life over to the Airline I chose to fly with to get me to my destination safely.
In this same moment, the person beside me began complaining about their drink being too hot and their TV not working properly. I thought to myself, “It is literally a miracle that we are in the air flying above what could kill us on a cold December day yet we find something to complain about.”
This was a tragedy of gratitude.
This person was missing the bigger miracle.
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Later, I was driving in the back of a cab in Abu Dhabi when my taxi driver avoided what could have been a very gruesome accident. Again, I looked out the window and was reminded that driving from point A to point B accident- free is also a miracle.
This led to the conclusion:
Life is a series of miracles just waiting to be discovered.
We need to look for the miracles.
In our fast paced, rushed society, that is bottom line driven and production based, it is no wonder why we can easily take these series of miracles in our everyday lives for granted. We instead take miracles, such as safe transportation, for granted and replace our gratitude with negativity, criticism and sometimes anger for trivial things.
These miracles come in many forms but here are the most common miracles which we take for granted daily, or worse, don’t even bother to see.
Some include
- Driving
- Flying
- Walking
- Living In A Sky rise apartment
- Shipping
- Video Conferencing (globally)
- Drinking Fresh Water
- Eating
- The Internet
- Medicine
All of the above are perfect examples of day to day miracles which we can participate in freely, safely and without sickness, or things which we can coordinate freely with the click of a finger in Canada.
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The next time you feel negative, or you are flying across the world with a drink that is too cold or too hot, I encourage you to refocus your mind.
Focus less on what is trivial and more on the miracle.
Focus on the series of miracles around you. Have an attitude of gratitude for the series of miracles that are in your life.
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This post was previously published on Medium.com.
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Photo credit: Tim Bogdanov on Unsplash