These are the Good Old Days

From all these individuals one learns three mental exercises to appreciate what we haveImagine a thing you own or a person or place you appreciate lostImagine that you were doing something for the last timeImagine that the life you lead is the life that millions aspire to as you aspire to some other lifeThe joy of finding lost thingsAll of us have lost things and sometimes refound them Often not A set of keys a wallet a passport Sometimes a child in a crowd and sometimes a friend after an argument who we make up with Other times it is our health or a home or a jobWhen we lose something we often feel more pain in its absence than the joy we had in its presence Whenever we have the opportunity to recover it we appreciate it more than ever beforeAn exercise from the Stoics is to imagine you have lost something to appreciate what one has As the line goes amp8220We do not know what we have until we have lost itamp8221Paying attention as if we were doing it for the last timeWhat makes the ordinary and every day extraordinary is that one day it will not be so There will be a last day a child will crawl A last day you will see someone A last day you will visit a place or drive a car or go to a restaurant Sometimes we know the last times and often we do not When we are aware of the last times we have a higher sense of attention and a sensitivity to the specialness and the passing of the momentBut these last times come every week and sometimes every day The ordinary becomes extraordinary when we pay attention and we find poetry in the crevices of every dayWe are living the life that many aspire toMost humans aspire to the next better and bigger thing A combination of our hedonistic adaptation getting used to what we have benchmarking against others and other things the income and home we thought would be amazing a decade ago may be seen as just okay when compared to others and imagination our ability to imagine greater bigger and better or be reminded of it in our media streams all drive us to nextWe sometimes define our happiness by our advancement toward the things we do not have versus the things we do have Most people living in the Western World or the Upper and Upper Middle Classes of most countries who also have their health are living the life that billions aspire toThe life we have got used to is the aspiration for most people We are living the dream life for many as we dream of living some other life We may wish to celebrate every new day as a day of thanks and gratitudeClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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These are the Good Old Days

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Rishad Tobaccowala

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These are the Good Old Days

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