Appreciating the Life We Have

Personal Perspective: Finding beauty in the muddle of life.

Reviewed by Lybi Ma

Key points

• Savor the good moments; they can become good experiences.
• Beauty can appear in the midst of busyness and difficulties.
• Appreciation isn't easy, but it changes how you see the world.

A friend of mine is a nurse with years of experience in palliative care. Her patients are often in considerable distress, understandable as they typically have less than a year to live. Whenever she talks about her work, she radiates light and compassion. To me, it seems that her whole life is filled with joy; she always has time for friends, adventure, and fun. She laughs a lot. This although I know she’s encountered more than her fair share of life’s challenges. And like all of us, she can have good days and bad days. My overriding sense of her is that she lives her life with a real sense of carpe diem. As a psychologist, I tend to ask quite direct questions. I asked her: “How do you find so much joy in your life? How do you stay full of compassion, having seen so much suffering in your work?” Without missing a beat, she responded, “I find the beauty in the muddle.”

How many times throughout the day do you miss moments of beauty, joy, and fun? You can be so busy muddling through life that you miss out on these moments. Or perhaps you just skate over them because you’re on autopilot or moving through your day at double speed, taking care of all the have-to-dos of life. Or perhaps your mind is set up somehow to orient to everything other than joy.

Think back to a typical day. How often do you have a sense of the beauty in the muddle? How often do you feel a sense of joy? When you do, are you able to stop to savor these moments? Moments of happiness, friendship, gratitude, fun, the sense of achievement at getting something done, the pleasure of seeing someone you care about doing well, moments of seeing beauty in nature? Waking up to see today’s weather, and to accept and appreciate it for what it is, the ever-changing weather and seasons? Can you pause and appreciate these moments?

Here is Mohammed on being a parent to young children: Parenting is exhausting; it can be relentless. I often feel like I have lost my life. But there are some moments every day when the kids are so adorable, when they say cute stuff, or when they’re asleep and my daughter can look like an angel; she isn’t (laughing). These moments sort of charge my battery for the rest of the day. And you know I do have some moments, when my wife baths them in the evening, the minutes before I fall asleep, which I have started to appreciate.

Appreciation Is a Practice

Alice Herz-Sommer, a WWII survivor of Auschwitz, went on to lead a happy life well into old age. She died at 106. Her secret was looking for the good and being thankful; she knew about the bad things in life, but she looked for the good things. She had seen humanity’s darkest side and was coping with failing health and approaching death, yet this remained the message she wanted to pass on.

We can all cultivate appreciation as an attitude of mind. It’s possible to be mindful of working with pain, suffering, and death. It takes only a small step out of habit and into awareness to enjoy the people we love around us, to savor food, or to dance to music while cooking. These moments are available to us if we choose to attend to them and, more than that, enjoy them.

Practice: Appreciating the Life You Have, Each Day

As you go about your day, make a habit of seeing, touching, and listening wholeheartedly, aware of how you are touching and being touched by the world. Take moments to pause. Feel the warmth of the sun, the breeze on your skin. See not only the trees but also the space around the trees; not only the stars but also the vastness of the sky that holds the stars. You can sense the small moments of generosity you extend to or receive from others—the smile, the door held open. Hear the laughter of a child on the playground. Taste the food you eat. Reflect on all that goes well for you today—your ability to move through the world, to be fed and warm, and to care for yourself. In every moment, sense what it is that holds the potential to gladden your heart when you are truly present.

Each day, intentionally bring awareness to something that you do regularly and know you enjoy. It could be anything—a morning cup of tea or coffee, a walk, a favorite snack, an interaction with someone you appreciate or love, a person or a pet, or a spacious moment in your day while you travel. Commit to being wholeheartedly present, and aware of your bodily sensations, feelings, and thoughts. Bring an innocent perception and sensitivity to the experience. Explore each of the senses in turn: seeing, hearing, taste, touch, smell. And sense how attention imbued with innocent perception affects your experience of this moment. Allow your heart to tremble amid the experience, gladdened by the simplicity of the moment.

Here is Ling describing a moment of appreciation: I was swimming and floating in a friend's pond recently, and because I had just learned this practice, I was able to be more fully aware of the beauty of the moment. The feel of myself immersed in the water, mostly warm, but with some colder patches, the smell of pine resin, the sounds of laughter, the warm glow of friendship, her dog lying on the shore desperate to join in. I turned to her, smiled, and said, "This is a good moment.” She met my eye, smiled back, and said simply, “Yes, yes it is.”