Dear present me,
What’s the best gift in life?
The gift of gratitude.
The gift of gratitude is the best in life because it’s the gift that keeps on giving. It’s renewable, replenishable, and on an infinite cycle of refueling and reenergizing your soul.
It’s also a gift that I can practice in my everyday life. It’s the perfect beginning and end to every page in the book that is life. And, it’s a gift that I’ve recently been receiving a lot.
To me, when it comes to receiving gifts in general, it’s not so much the gift that matters but more so the thought that was put into it. That’s not to say that I would prefer having a candy wrapper over the actual candy, but the last thing I would ever want is for someone to demolish their bank account to satiate my materialistic needs. For me, that just seems very unrealistic.
The gifts that I treasure most aren’t usually the ones that are objects; they’re the gifts people give through their actions and words that matter more.
For example, I cherish the hundreds of life lessons from teachers rather than the few pencils or pieces of candy that I gather throughout the year.
I cherish the memories that I create in school rather than the pamphlets or tickets that showcase me going to the event.
To me, the gift of gratitude is being able to cherish those moments. And, as corny as that might sound, to me, it’s not, because there was a time in my life when I took almost every little minuscule aspect of my life for granted.
So, from that day forward, I made a promise to myself that I would always find gratitude in the little things no matter how small they were.
Now that I get the chance to look at my life from this gratifying perspective, I can finally say that I am starting to be content with the way my life is playing out.
However, the reason why I say that gratitude is a gift that I’ve been receiving a lot is because I’m starting to appreciate all the things in my life no matter how insignificant, inconvenient, or inconsequential they can be at times. In other words, I take the hardships I face in life with a grain of salt.
I can either choose to let the past experiences of my life define me, or I can continue with life and try to never look back. I’m now just realizing that I’m going to have to make a TV show reference in order to further prove my point.
In the fifth season of The Flash, Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) is met with a difficult discussion with his daughter Nora (Jessica Parker Kennedy) about the concept of time travel. Barry calmly asks Nora how when it comes to time traveling as a speedster, will she always take a “do-over” every time she makes a mistake or is she going to live with the mistakes she made and move on with her life?
This scene particularly resonated with me and is a scene that I continually remind myself of to bring me back to the present moment.
However, I’m not saying that it’s easy; the gift of gratitude that has been bestowed upon me has continually been a gift that I have been trying to practice in my everyday life.
It’s applied to the most pertinent aspects of my life, but that could also just be because I was naturally born to be a corny person.
As a teacher of mine once told me, sometimes, the best way to think about life is to think about how a rock perceives it. Rocks are naturally made from the processes of the earth and because they are neither dead nor alive—they just exist—so you can’t be mad at a rock for being a rock because it’s a rock. No matter how much you try and change it, it’s always going to be a rock first.
So, this is why I think the best gifts aren’t materialistic ones.
Because gratitude is the best gift in life.
Sincerely,
present me
