Yesterday, I found an old draft of a blog entry I never published. It contained a few phrases about my desire to consciously appreciate the fortunes of life. Love, prosperity, family, etc. I thought about this for a bit.
Considering the fruit of my thoughts, I would like to pose this question: is the mere verb "to appreciate" possible in the present tense? Surely we use it as such. We tell it to people all the time. The girl behind the counter at Yankee Candle the other day had a $5 off of $15 coupon that she graciously scanned for me. I mean, $5 off of $15 is pretty good. That's a 1/3 off that she saved me, and she didn't have to do that.
"Oh wow, cool, thanks! I appreciate it!" I exclaimed.
But it came and went. Fleetingly. Later in the day, I communicated my shopping victory more along the lines of: "Oh yeah, it was a good sale. It ended up being $12 with the coupon." The action, the gesture was gone. And so was my appreciation, in the deepest sense of the word.
This is just how we all operate. We say we appreciate and we don't. We tell ourselves to appreciate more consciously and we just can't. Perhaps you could have condensed this whole entry into, "you never know what you have until it's gone." Surely a cliche of truth. But, I think there's a bit more.
Various dictionaries define 'appreciating' as "esteeming, or putting high value upon," "feeling grateful or thankful for," or even, "recognizing the full worth or magnitude of."
There's no way we all do that last one. We suck at it. We suck at recognizing full worth and magnitude. Most of us can't live in the moment. Rather, we cling to the security blankets that are the depressions from the past and anxieties of the future. We can't feel the now because we are all unbalanced in one way or another. Our souls and spiritualities aren't aligned, aren't sound. And when they aren't, the fleeting appreciation is exactly what happens. We don't feel it deeply, we feel it for a moment. We get a glimmer. And it goes away. You know that feeling! The one that we can't keep. We can't keep it. It can flood us, but it never stays strong.
Because, we deceive ourselves with our eyes, with our tangible senses. We see something, someone, right in front of us. We can touch him or her, we can see whatever it might be right in front of our faces. So we relax, and fold our hands smugly. Oh her? She's always there and always will be is how your body reacts. It's not a conscious thing. It's just a false sense of security in your surroundings. And you know what comes next: we don't think about anything until it's ripped from us cruelly, violently.
Of course, the key is to align, to balance, to bring your pieces into harmony. That needs to be the precursor. Then, I reckon you can appreciate.
I try. I just don't know exactly how to do it quite yet.
But, I want to get there.
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Brett Murphy Hunt is the owner of Brett E. Murphy Tutoring & Consulting
She is also conducting an internet history experiment called Show All History.