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!