Category: Appreciation

  • Father : A silent duty

    Father : A silent duty

    Fathers are often overlooked or forgotten, because they’re seldom in the limelight.

    Silently serving in the background, they often do what is seen as just their job, or their duty.

    Not wired with an overt nurturing instinct, but rather that of a silent sentinel, ensuring their family’s safety and comfort, they often grow accustomed to being in the background, creating the spaces needed for their family to thrive.

    When we expect fathers to behave in a similar way to mothers, we diminish their contribution and their sacrifices.

    When we expect fathers to show up like mothers, we under estimate their emotional needs, and ignore their silent pleas for gratitude.

    When we expect fathers to experience emotion and sentiment in the same way that mothers do, we assume that they were gifted with the beauty of connecting with a soul growing within them, not realising that they were always on the outside looking in.

    There is a bond between mother and child that a father will never experience because of the sanctity of childbirth. Perhaps that is why fathers will always find a different way to express their love for their family compared to mothers.

    Honour your father by recognising his struggle and efforts without finding reason to judge him compared to your mother.

    And if you find he is falling short anyway, approach him with understanding, believing that the gentleness you wish to experience with him lies beneath that seemingly impenetrable exterior that developed only because he quietly accepted his place as a provider and forgot to nurture his own emotional needs.

    And to the fathers who show up despite not knowing how it is done because they didn’t have the loving guide of a mentor in their lives, I especially salute you. Breaking cycles of toxic dysfunction is never easy, and is often excruciatingly lonely.

    So if no one else notices you today, I do. With love, appreciation, and respect.

    Happy father’s day.

    #fatherson

  • Money is not the root of evil

    Money is not the root of evil

    Money is nothing more than a tool.

    It’s a means to an end, not a motivation in itself.

    Even its accumulation through miserliness, or its wastage through extravagance still makes it nothing more than a tool to achieve a greater goal.

    Ingratitude is what results in such tools being used to our detriment, or to the detriment of others.

    Money in the hands of an ingrate is used to harm others, or the self.

    Ingratitude is therefore the demon that we must learn to understand if we hope to use money in a way that creates a fulfilled life.

    Ingratitude is born of the belief that we are entitled to things or outcomes.

    That sense of entitlement is based on our need to feel validated by such privilege, because we see it as a measure of how much we mean to others.

    Our need for such validation is from a lack of appreciation for who we are and what our unique contribution to this world can be, and instead, a fixation on everything that we don’t have.

    Understand the source of your ingratitude, and tools like money will carry with it benefits and blessings in ways you never thought possible, without contaminating your ego in the process.

  • The silent ones

    The silent ones

    True misery doesn’t love company.

    It decays the soul in silence.

    When someone is complaining, it’s because they still have hope that someone cares enough to listen or respond.

    Or even to empathise.

    When they give up on these three things, they go silent because they have grown to accept that no one else cares, or understands the state that they’re in.

    Too often we see their silence and assume it to be acceptance of their struggles or challenges, meanwhile it often symbolises the slow death of dreams, hopes, and ultimately, a life.

    Silence is the silent killer, more than rage.

    Listen with both ears and your heart.

    Pay attention to the silent ones.

    Your noise of ingratitude may just be drowning out their silence of pain.

    Find the balance between living loud and loving sincerely.

    The one without the other will smother people closest to you.

  • Live, and let die…

    Live, and let die…

    Sometimes, our setbacks in life can feel as if our world is coming to an end.

    In many ways, it does spell the end of a lifetime for us because we reach points where everything that we know to be true comes under question.

    Major life events like health issues that compromise our quality of life, divorce, death, or even losing a job all carry with it an impact that could easily derail all our hopes and dreams for the future.

    Choosing to hold on to the hurt, or the pain, or the sense of loss from such experiences doesn’t change the reality that it brought with it.

    Instead, holding on denies us the opportunity to grow from such experiences, and to continue to build that life that we set out to achieve.

    But what is there to learn from bad experiences?

    More than the lessons that it taught us about the shortcomings in decisions that we may have made, it is only in the presence of pain that the depth of joy can be appreciated.

    It is only through loss that we learn to appreciate what can be lost when we have it.

    When we experience loss or tragedy, or even disappointment and betrayal at the hands of others where we have no control over the outcomes despite our best efforts, we must recognise that it is a moment of grounding that will reshape what we take from life from that moment forward.

    If we’re not aware of the good that we can take, we will remain invested in the bitterness of the experience as we convince ourselves that remembering is the only way to protect ourselves from feeling such pain ever again.

    No. Remembering beyond the lesson learnt doesn’t protect us from such pain in future, it simply holds on to the pain of the past and denies us a future without it.

    Embrace the good, learn from the bad, and appreciate the present.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Two rules for life

    Two rules for life

    There are two rules that I wish more people would apply in their lives.

    Rules that will result in more sincerity and less hypocrisy.

    More trust, less betrayal.

    More wholesome relationships, less infidelity and betrayal.

    The two rules are simple.

    Firstly, don’t exhaust yourself explaining your behaviour to people who don’t matter. This not only gives you a false sense of your significance when they pretend to listen, it also gives them a false sense of significance in your life when they believe that you’re explaiming yourself because they matter to you.

    Secondly, when choosing who matters, be sure that you’re doing it based on who really matters to you. They must be consequential to your happiness and sense of belonging in this world. If not, you’ll surround yourself with anyone and everyone that you want must care, because you need to fill the void of human connection in your life.

    Sometimes we think that by being polite we’re treating others with respect. However, when that polite attitude leads people to believe that they’re significant when they’re not, it causes more hurt and betrayal when they realise that you were just being polite, rather than sincere.

    That’s how being insincere to avoid hurting someone’s feelings causes more hurt than you would’ve caused had you been honest and sincere in the first place. .

    Be sincere, always. Even if it means that you will be unpopular for that moment.

    That moment of unpopularity could save you and others from a lifetime of disappointment and pain.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Claim your self-worth

    Claim your self-worth

    Don’t be like those that only serve others when there’s something in it for them.

    That’s not goodwill or charity, it’s business.

    Uplifting others should be done because you want them to experience the value that you have in your life.

    Not because you want them to worship you, or celebrate your praises.

    Let’s bring sincerity and authenticity back into fashion.

    My sense of self-worth can only be established through selfless service to those around me.

    Whether my contribution is appreciated or not is not what defines me.

    But that I contribute, sacrifice, and enrich others’ lives willingly is what has always brought joy to me, and has always given me reason to sleep peacefully at night, even if spurned by those that I serve the most.

    Serve because of your conviction in the value that it brings to others, not because of the gratitude or acknowledgement that you need for your service.

  • If tomorrow never comes…

    If tomorrow never comes…

    So often I hear people speak of tomorrow not being guaranteed, but still packing away that dinner set for just a special occasion.

    We delay making changes that we know we need to make to improve the quality of our life, or of the lives of those around us, because we think we have time.

    We look at inspirational memes that speak of valuing and appreciating loved ones while they’re here, but avoid reaching out to them, or inviting them into our spaces because we are not ready for it yet.

    Worse than all this, we hold within us the pain of past wounds, refusing to let go, because we convince ourselves that a single moment of hurt is what defines or contaminates every moment with someone thereafter.

    That’s how we deny healing.

    That’s how we defer life.

    That’s how we suffocate our dreams.

    And it’s all because of fearing the possibility of experiencing such pain or rejection, or failure again.

    So we protect ourselves from being vulnerable, while denying ourselves the love of life itself.

    The reality of death only sets in when death stares at us without blinking.

    Until that moment, we convince ourselves that we have time to start that important project tomorrow, or next week, or when we get leave from work, or maybe when we retire.

    Each time assuming that we’re guaranteed to reach those moments when we think things will be just right for us to finally make that change or to take that step.

    When time runs out, it runs out without warning, because it reminded us that we were losing life each time we celebrated another occasion but neglected the moments between those occasions.

    Stop taking your life for granted and begin today what you’ve been putting off for so many yesterdays.

    Tomorrow is not guaranteed.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Humanity for sale

    Humanity for sale

    The ones driven by the validation of others turn themselves into victims.

    The ones driven by the belief that no one cares or no one understands, turn themselves into oppressors and abusers.

    But when we’re so focused on our own struggles, we fail to see the struggles that we introduce into the lives of others.

    That’s why we have no shortage of people reminding others to treat everyone with kindness, but rarely treating anyone with kindness if there’s nothing in it for them.

    Even our humanity has become a transaction in this capitalistic world of individual worship.

    We worship our needs before we revere any principles or values that we claim to uphold.

    Hence humanity’s slide into the abyss of loneliness.

    When will we awaken? 😞