Humans, like other living creatures, work best when our backs are against the wall and when we are forced to make a decision in the face of certain despair.
It is the adversity and hardship that can shape us for the better and teach us lessons that can only be learned by going through those experiences.
Have you ever spoken with someone who has been through great turmoil or despair? Maybe they faced war, famine, disease, or otherwise. Rarely do you find this type of person ungrateful or petty? Rarely.
Because they have perspective.
They’ve scrapped and clawed to get to the point where many of us take for granted.
That is the beauty of perspective. We all can have it, every single day. But it comes with a small price. We have to be willing to step outside ourselves, accept our good fortune and the opportunities presented to us to get us where we are at today. It’s not taking away the fact that we may have worked hard but it’s empathetic to the alternative of what could’ve happened. That we have been dealt a hand with a few better cards in it to play in the game. We may have an advantage when we often don’t realize it.
We might not have gone through incredible hardship as others but it is the acknowledgment of the potential doom we avoided coupled with gratitude for the path we ended up on that should give us a perspective for today and the days ahead to focus us on the positive when it can be so easy to dwell on the negative.