“Now that everything is going well in your life, don’t you feel bored?”
I chuckled over this question my friend Ramz posed the other day. No I am not bored. I am grateful. There is an underrated joy in having a period of uninterrupted peace in one’s life, which is where I find myself of late – in peace with everything the universe has decided to throw at me. Admittedly, the universe has been kind enough to put my general situation in a steady state.
When I caught up with my friend Hiu in Hong Kong last month, she remarked that I seem happy. “You’ve always been a happy person, but you look happier.” As I ponder over this, I deemed it necessary to acknowledge the important role my friends play in my life; I get to see my reflection through the lenses of their eyes. I don’t have the key to unlocking happiness but if I have to narrow it down to one thing, it’s the constant practice of gratitude that has immensely helped me tide the unpredictable waves of life.
The other day when I went out for a run, I started feeling irked by the traffic lights for interrupting my course which in turn slowed my average pace. I chastised myself mid-thought, recalibrated my perspective, and felt grateful for the fact that I could even run. Half a year ago, you would have found me taking the bus home one kilometre in. I picked up running second half of last year and have since taken an earnest interest in it. My goal is to run a full marathon by the end of this year. It’s a tall order but if Pia Wurtzbach could do it, so can I because why not I’m a queen! Charot! It helps me that H is a runner and has ran 13 full marathons so I often get valuable insight from his experience. He says it would take a special event to force him out of his self-imposed retirement but he’s happy to run races with me, albeit shorter distances. Just when I thought my physical strength has peaked, I surprise myself for feeling stronger than ever.
As it turns out, whenever I feel good physically, I feel good mentally. My bandwidth for processing and dealing with various situations no matter the gravity expands. Even I’m in awe at how calm and collected I’ve become, most of the time. In my view, the mind and body are connected. The body cannot do what the mind won’t will it to. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that elite athletes pay just as much attention to their mental game as they do with their physical one. It’s all in the mind. I’ve never fully grasped what this meant until I’ve had to push myself to overcome difficult undertakings. And the more I keep pushing, the more agile my mind becomes, my adaptability further increases. Nonetheless, I’ve learned to control only what I can and let go of what I cannot, confident in the belief that things always have a way of working out for the better.
While it doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with gratitude, I realize everything I have been doing always comes on the back of it. It’s a virtue I’ve learned to emulate from my dear grandmother. The other day she told me to pray and thank the Lord for our good health. “Bahala na’g walay kwarta” she said, to which I quipped, I think you should also ask the Lord for that. In her piety, I witnessed firsthand how abundance always flows in her life. She doesn’t ask for much, but what she asks for, she receives. Where there’s gratitude, there is contentment but there is also hopefulness. What makes it such a powerful virtue is that it allows us to see the goodness in life and encourages us to bring about such goodness.
Robert Kuok, Malaysian business tycoon more popularly known as the founder of the Shangri-la hotels, wrote in his memoir that his mother instilled in him three core values: be faithful, have gratitude, never boast. Gratitude. From one of world’s richest. Maybe we ought to listen. Anyhow, I cannot recommend his book enough, easily one of the most enjoyable and insightful books I’ve ever read.
My friend Dann the other day was irate about a horrendous seven hour delay on his flight. Certainly not the kind of situation anyone will ever be grateful for. But Dann being one of the most positive humans ever still managed to see the goodness in it because at the end of the day he said, “Importante, buhi!”. I think that pretty much sums up what gratitude is.