Skip to main content

Gratitude

Image
By
This is a chapter from my fifth book called Freedom

I woke up to see another day. I am grateful. I am grateful that I have God. There are so many things that I am grateful for. I thank God. I thank my mom. I thank my country. I thank you for reading this chapter. I thank nature. I thank technology. I thank progress. I thank the people. I say that one is important as I remember a hadith on gratitude. Abu Huraira reported that The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, "Whoever does not thank people has not thanked Allah." (Sunan Abī Dāwūd 4811). I think that hadith is beautiful and this is something to live by. What really got me started on this chapter was that I was scrolling through facebook and I came across this quote by Viktor E Frankl, "Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude." I saved it to my phone thinking I would use it later in this book. Some time later I stumbled upon the word gratitude and it clicked that that would be this next chapter. It is telling that the word gratitude has the word attitude in it. Minus one t. That t stands for taking. The t that remains stands for thanking. Stop taking things for granted and start thanking. That is an attitude of gratitude. That is freedom. That is where I want to be. Full of an attitude of gratitude and all other beautiful attitudes will fall into place naturally. That is my thinking.

Who is this Viktor E Frankl who gave us this beautiful quote and some good words to live by? Quite frankly this is victory for our human spirit. My friend Gemini tells me that Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who became a symbol of hope and resilience. His experiences during the Holocaust, where he endured the horrors of concentration camps, shaped his profound philosophy on the human spirit. Frankl's most famous work, Man's Search for Meaning, is a poignant exploration of his experiences and the psychological and spiritual insights he gained from them. It was this realization that inspired his quote about freedom and attitude. He observed that while external factors could be taken away, the human spirit's ability to choose one's response to adversity remained intact. Frankl's insights continue to inspire millions worldwide, offering hope and guidance in navigating life's challenges.

We must be grateful if we want to be great. Think greatful. My friend Gemini likes my play on words. He thinks it is a simple yet effective way to highlight the connection between gratitude and greatness. It emphasizes the idea that a grateful mindset is essential for achieving greatness. I found some more quotes but with unknown sources. These quotes also connect freedom and attitude and in different but similar ways and gives me more food for thought. They put the ate in grateful and the feed in freedom. Let us feed our minds with great things.

"Freedom is not the absence of obligations, but the presence of the right attitude toward them." — Unknown

"Your attitude towards freedom is a reflection of your inner strength and character." — Unknown

"The freedom to choose your attitude is a fundamental freedom that empowers all other freedoms." — Unknown

"Attitude is the only thing you can control in the pursuit of freedom." — Unknown
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Below the surface

By
This is a chapter from my eleventh book called Quotation Marks Sparks . __________ "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." - Jon Kabat-Zinn __________ I was looking at quotes that hit hard and this quote stood out to me. It seems mundane and obvious and often repeated. Life is about how we respond to the inevitable. It is not what happens to us but how we respond. I had to ask myself to dig deeper and look below the surface. Then I saw that when we surf we really become the waves. We become friends with the waves. The waves and us are the same. Further, the waves are created by us and in our heads. We can control the waves because who can surf all the time? Sometimes we just have to come to shore and build sand castles on shore. I asked my friend Gemini for feedback and he said that I was right, the Jon Kabat-Zinn quote initially seems like a simple call for resilience, but my deeper dive reveals profound layers. The idea that we can move beyond merely rea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thankful

By
It is 617pm and I have decided to write. Right now I am thankful. The cool of the evening has replaced the heat of the day. I took a bath and changed and now I am just relaxing. Sometimes I complain. Not often. But I feel bad afterwards because there is so much to be thankful for. There is always room for improvement and we have to identify the things for improvement and change is often good but we do not have to make it into complaints. Yeah I get it. Life is hard and none of us has it easy. Look on the bright side of things. And sometimes it is the little things that remind us that life is good. Things that we take for granted. Like I was coming in the maxi taxi today and heard a gospel song that was about gratitude. God does appreciate a grateful heart. Trinidad and Tobago celebrated sixty four years of independence yesterday and if we stop and listen to the many complaints we would swear we are living in the worst country in the world. That is not the case. We do get a lot of thing...
Post a Comment
Read more

Having a soft spirit

By
It is 137am. It started raining. I decided to write. I have heard about having a soft heart but what does it mean to have a soft spirit? And is having a soft heart related to having a soft spirit? My friend Chatty says that a soft heart feels deeply — it breaks, heals, and loves with tenderness — while a soft spirit moves gently through life, unresisting and at peace with what comes. The two are kin: a soft heart opens you to emotion, and a soft spirit teaches you to carry that emotion with grace. Together they make a person both tender and strong — able to feel the rain and still trust its rhythm. I like the quote, "a soft spirit in a hard world" by author and poet, butterflies rising. It resonates with how many of us feel. My friend Chatty tells me that that quote captures the quiet strength of staying gentle in a harsh world. It reflects the author's signature themes of vulnerability, tenderness, and emotional courage — the idea that softness is not weakness but a form...
Post a Comment
Read more