Count your losses!

There is no doubt that counting our blessings help us appreciate life, feel thankful for the things we have, value our relations & belongings even more. It lifts our spirits when we are distressed and inspires us to do good, to be a better person.

However, counting our blessings all the time shields our reality. It blurs our vision of what is real, what is really true. It can give us false optimism and float us away from our true selves and circumstances, rather than helping us see the real situations.

Let me explain!

While counting our blessings, we say, for example that I am blessed to have such good family, a caring & loving husband, a good house to live in, a high-income job etc. We think that there are so many people who don’t even have this, I am lucky & blessed to have everything, so I should be thankful, and happy, and satisfied with my life.

However, the ‘loving & caring husband’ can, at the same time, also be too dominating, overpowering or authoritative, who clips your wings every time you have an opinion. A good house can be completely unlike your tastes and preferences, but you ought to like it, because so many people don’t have one! Your high-income job does pay your bills but leaves you hollow from the inside because by the end of each day your self-worth has been sucked away through the monotonous and unrewarding tasks. But you ought to like it, because you are blessed to have one!

All these are contradictions, and life is full of contradictions, reality is contradictory!

We must count our blessings from time to time, however our losses too need to be counted & confronted once in a while, because it is the losses that gives a clear picture of everything that’s missing in our lives, and only when we know and acknowledge that, we will strive to achieve and make it a part of our lives. It is in the face value of the losses that we can be exceptionally true to ourselves.

However, the purpose is not to become a sour person clinging to all the negativities in life but to realize the true nature of things. Yes! We are blessed but we can be even more blessed if we question the things that are missing in our lives. Life can be even more blessed. The purpose is to be more intuitive and truer to our personalities.

But all this needs to be done with a transparent lens and not the greedy one. You will need to be more free-spirited and risk taking to endure that path. You need to be daring to go down that road of acknowledging what all is not worth it and what surely is.