Guest Post: A call for young people to appreciate their surroundings
A call for young people to appreciate their
surroundings
Stop and smell the roses: it’s a cliché that many of
us would do well to take to heart.
This post is a clarion call
for young people—particularly recently college grads—frustrated with their
place in life to take a moment and see all the good around them. Though
prospects might seem better elsewhere, though you might despise your current
situation, there’s always some positive takeaway to be had. It’s just a matter
of looking around you in the right places.
Whether or not you choose to see it, there are countless sources of good and
wonderment around you. There’s tremendous inspiration to be drawn from the
ordinary happenings of everyday life, though they might not seem noteworthy at
first glance. Our lives are made up of people and things capable of inspiring
creativity, positivity, and motivation.
Reflect
on the technology that you rely on every day
For one thing, we live in a world completely driven
by a digital lifestyle. Right now people are capable of doing things dismissed
as impossible merely twenty years ago. The web boom in the early 2000s accounts
for much of the modern technological marvels; it accounts for how you could
spend the rest of your life looking at cat videos without ever seeing the same
one twice. It’s why you can use your phone to tell what the weather will be
like in Chicago tomorrow before your booking your flight online.
Modern technological marvels allow us to communicate
with loved ones over huge distances in the blink of an eye, with an intimacy
second only to real touch. Smartphones, tablets, virtual gaming, Skype, online
grocery shopping, and online dating services: all these things have become so
natural to us that we forget to appreciate how lucky we are to have any of it.
How large can your problems seem when compared with such human achievement?
Appreciate
the stability of your life
There’s a nasty sensationalist streak in our current
media that sometimes lets us lose sight of the fact that we live in a
first-world country. Turn on the television or the radio, look at a news
website, and you’ll be bombarded with harrowing stories about financial ruin
and tragic circumstances plaguing our country. Yes, it is true that bad things
happen in this country, and there are issues that must be need to be addressed
by citizens and politicians alike.
But the quality of life in America far outweighs the
majority of countries on this earth, and that’s not something to be taken for
granted. The majority of American grips and complaints are like a national case
of “First World Problems.”
In other words, you should put things into
perspective when you get worked up about trivial problems. Getting the wrong
order at your local coffee shop or complaining about the annoying musical
tastes of a coworker should seem like small potatoes compared to everything
else going on in the world. You just need to stop and realize the relativity of
your woes.
Do you take the time to appreciate your
surroundings?
Nadia Jones is a freelance business and higher
education blogger writing about accredited
online colleges. Nadia is keenly interested in how the college students of
today are shaping the professional world of tomorrow, and how they’re using the
web to do it. Please send some comments her way!
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