Living Appreciation

This is a continuation of my previous post "Living in the System"

With living and creating a Safe Haven for and as myself, a word that has come up is ‘appreciation’. To live the word ‘appreciation’, as a sort of building block to build my ‘safe haven’. This word actually came up within looking at how to create and live that Safe Haven on a physical level, in my world and reality. And I realized that I actually have had a tendency to ‘take things for granted’ when it comes to my physical environment. Or to be rather overly possessive and obsessive within trying to ‘hold on to’ the things that I value in my life, but then within that I end up actually neglecting these things believe it or not.

I neglect to really consider and be sensitive to what these things really need. It’s kind of like holding and squeezing a pet canary so tightly that it dies, when all you were trying to do was just protect it or keep it safe. Where you weren’t actually sensitive to the real needs of that canary. So I realized I need to learn to APPRECIATE things, rather than having this possessive/obsessive relationship. Kind of in the principle of ‘if you love something, let it go’. Or more ‘if you love something, let it be’.

Cause an interesting thing that happens when you start obsessing over what you ‘love’, is that you actually become consumed with a fear of losing it and you stop seeing or recognizing or APPRECIATING what it really is that you love about it in the first place. With ‘appreciation’, you more take a step back and rather than being sort of ‘lost’ in this belief that ‘OMG I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE AND I CANNOT LOSE IT AND MUST HOLD ON TO IT NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES!’, you more just ‘take it in’. As though you’re standing on a mountain side after a tough climb and you have a chance to look over the landscape and you sort of ‘take in’ the scenery, within an appreciation for being able to stand there and see it all.

It’s to sort of be ‘grateful’ of the things in my life. Yet, with appreciation, there’s also a dimension of ‘giving back’. Like, not just being grateful for what I ‘have’, but also realizing that in order to ‘keep’ or ‘maintain’ what I have, I must ‘give back’. I must care and support and consider and be sensitive to what my environment actually needs and requires. In fact, I must EQUALLY care, support, consider and be sensitive to my environment as I am to myself.

So, I’ve been looking at HOW to practically live this word appreciation. Like, I’ve got it down in ‘theory’ and in its ‘definition’ but there has to be an equal living of it within and as the physical. How can I live moments of appreciation in my physical world and reality?

I mean, something that immediately comes up is that I can be more ‘physically affectionate’ with Paul for instance, or with our two cats Suki and Vincent. To just give them a bit more attention throughout the day. I can look into the point of ‘giving’ in general and just ask myself how I can ‘give back’, or what I can ‘give’. Which also means that I’d have to start getting more in tune with what the people and the beings around me actually ‘need’ and ‘require’. Which, admittedly, is not something I tend to look at generally speaking.

In fact I’d say it’s a ‘muscle’ I haven’t ever flexed or used really. I’m so used to actually more just thinking about myself and the things I want, need and desire. So I guess that just means it’ll be a ‘challenge’ to, in moments, look at what I could ‘give’ to my environment and shift that focus from ‘what I want/need/desire’ to ‘what can I give?’ and ‘how can I support?’