My passion to create new stuff or just to share comes from a wide range of sources:
- Writings of popular authors/bloggers (who often suggest how creativity helped them live a more fulfilling and an examined life),
- stories of people who have hit rock bottom (who suggest how the act of creation was a life raft that saved them from their troubling daily existence)
- Creative folks . The first time I met a few creative humans , the key life skill / trait they all seemed to possess was an immense gratitude to life and all it has to offer. These people had 0 bank balances, no certainty about their work/future and yet had an absolutely no fear of tomorrow; they were content with their “todays” and were just trying to be completely alive to the present moment; believe me when I say that its not as easy as it sounds.
As I started learning their stories and their paths to where they are today, a clear pattern emerges – they all started from a place of utmost gratitude to what they already have in their lives (regardless of where they are or what their situation is). I’m going to explain this with a few examples and quotes:
- JK Rowling (in her Harvard Commencement Speech says this):
- One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.
- Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
- Tommy Rivs (Endurance runner who recovered from a rare form of lung cancer and completed a marathon post his recovery)
- The biggest takeaway is that there is not this idealistic future, somewhere down the line where we’re going to find happiness, where happiness exists there and we’re going to be happy. That we’re going to get there and everything’s going to be right and we’re going to have this sense of just contentment and rest and ease. It’s right now, it’s all happening this very moment. Our ability to have joy, to have happiness, to be happy is 100% based on our capacity to see it as its happening.
- I remember thinking that this morning, it was cold, windy, construction going on, loud, bunch of cars driving away too fast, but it was also, the sun was out, I could hear the ocean. I can breathe without carrying oxygen with me. I can eat through my mouth. I don’t have a tube anymore in my stomach. I can take a shower by myself. My heart rate doesn’t go to 190 just because the hot water hits me. I can use the toilet by myself. I don’t have to wear a diaper. I don’t have bed sores right now. I don’t have to piss out of a catheter. All of those things, the absence of those things, it’s incredible, it’s a miracle. And the ability to see that right now, this situation, there’s nothing that could make it any better.
- Amar Ramesh & Door Santhanam (we met them for dinner on 26th Dec 2020 and these are from my journal entry that day):
- Happiness comes from within, be content with yourself and what you have got. All creativity and energy comes from there
- Be more aware, just increase your awareness of yourself, the universe is magical and it will send things your way
Through these writings and conversations, I have gradually started to appreciate the power of gratitude more and more. Oprah nailed it when she said “the more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate“
And as I start my blog, I believe the best way to start it is to acknowledge all these things by writing my 1st series of articles on “gratitude”, which I can confidently say is the most basic life skill that would help us all be better off. In the upcoming articles, I will be sharing stuff I’m grateful for, and the tools that have helped me live a more grateful life.
Quick Tip (My suggestion to be more grateful) :
Gratitude Journaling – Having written my daily gratitude journal for the past 1 year, I would say that the simple act of writing down the top 3 things that I’m grateful for each day has helped me in appreciating the goodness that’s already abundant in my life and to more proactively look for this same goodness in humans around me (Family, Friends and Strangers)
Notes:
