4,000 Weeks!

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learn to appreciate what we haveWe all tend to take things for granted. We take our food for granted, because we can afford it, and it’s always available. Same goes for the roof over our heads. But you know as well as I do that lots of people have neither a roof over their heads nor a nourishing meal to look forward to. Yet we just take these things for granted most of the time.

We can read and write, but how many of us actually spend time reading on a regular basis? Sure, we might read a good book if someone recommends it, but do we really read regularly? Like, every single day? For most of us, the answer is no. And yet if we were to take reading less for granted and realise what an amazing power this is … we’d be consuming books as though reading were the magical process it actually is.

All the luxuries of life, we tend to accept and take for granted. We have double glazing. Our parents probably didn’t, and their parents almost certainly didn’t. But we just accept it as normal and fail to realise what a wonderful addition to a modern home it is.

We take it all for granted …

This applies to so many things. If we started to see them in a different light, and not take them so much for granted, we’d be living in a state of endless gratitude (which, by the way, would definitely be a very good thing!). Because in truth, we have so much to be grateful for. Indeed, living in the modern world, we are enjoying things that our parents and grandparents could only have wished for.

We take our computers and smartphones for granted these days, but until very recently they were no more than a science fiction writer’s fantasy. Indeed, I could list various quotes about the non-necessity of having a personal computer, but I’ll just settle for one: in 1977, Ken Olsen, a prominent computer industry pioneer who founded the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), is reported to have said, “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home”. And yet here we are, 50 years later, with PCs, laptops, smartphones, cable TV boxes, health and fitness trackers, voice assistants, and so on.

TIME … our most precious asset

hourglassBut of all the things we take for granted, the most valuable by far is time. We blithely assume we have plenty of time to have fun, to make something of our lives, to achieve things, to learn new skills. Yet we fail, again and again, to realise that our time here on this beautiful planet is limited.

One minute we’re kids, playing and enjoying life, and looking forward eagerly to the time when we can get a job or start some sort of fabulous career. In almost no time at all, that’s our reality; we’re forging ahead in our lives, or maybe just plodding along in them, but either way we’re getting on with our lives and all the time the clock is ticking, relentlessly ticking.

But we hardly notice it. Because we’re taking it all for granted. Time, that most precious and valuable of all commodities, is slipping away like the sand slipping through the neck of the hourglass. But we hardly ever notice it.