Alternate:Words

Appre­ci­a­tion, orig­i­nally uploaded by Thorsten Becker.

ap·pre·ci·a·tion
n.
1.Recognition of the qual­ity, value, sig­nif­i­cance, or mag­ni­tude of peo­ple and things.
2. A judg­ment or opin­ion, espe­cially a favor­able one.
3. An expres­sion of grat­i­tude.
4. Aware­ness or del­i­cate per­cep­tion, espe­cially of aes­thetic qual­i­ties or val­ues.
5. A rise in value or price, espe­cially over time.

From The Free Dictionary

A per­sonal ques­tion, if I may: What have you appre­ci­ated today? Any­thing in par­tic­u­lar that you have shown your­self appre­cia­tive for, rec­og­nized something’s or someone’s qual­ity, value, sig­nif­i­cance? I find that in most west­ern soci­eties these days the virtue of show­ing appre­ci­a­tion has greatly dimin­ished. We are con­stantly bom­barded with opin­ions, com­ments, slo­gans, adver­tise­ments, rec­om­men­da­tions and the likes, often with a rather neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion. It seems to be en vogue to be rude, arro­gant, out­spo­ken, taboo break­ing and intrud­ing with­out lit­tle to no regards of the effects. Human nature often dri­ves us to find and point out fault and neg­a­tiv­ity, it is some­thing that comes quite easy to all of us. And admit­tedly there are many things these days that con­tribute to this, things that are beyond our con­trol. Ris­ing cost in liv­ing, gas prices, com­mod­ity prices, polit­i­cal deci­sions beyond our con­trol, stress at work, a lack of recog­ni­tion for one’s efforts, all of these fac­tors can play into our dis­po­si­tion. Unfor­tu­nately neg­a­tiv­ity breeds and attracts more neg­a­tiv­ity. The bib­li­cal proverb ‘keep con­quer­ing the evil with the good” seems to be more and more sub­sti­tuted with “beat evil over the head with a snippy come­back”. But adding black to black will not make a brighter color. I find it impor­tant to actively dis­tract ones neg­a­tive ten­den­cies away towards pos­i­tive think­ing, not in a sense as to become obliv­i­ous to issues around us but as a truly pos­i­tive counter force.

We all have a choice, each day. We can choose to be pos­i­tive or we can choose to be neg­a­tive. We can let things get under our skin and bother us or we can actively seek a pos­i­tive bal­ance. This is where I find show­ing appre­ci­a­tion invalu­able. Appre­ci­a­tion starts with lit­tle things, things we don’t always notice or have come to take for granted. It takes a cer­tain effort to be appre­cia­tive, we must stop and think for a moment, over­come cer­tain men­tal dis­po­si­tions and actively look around. Appre­ci­a­tion is directly linked to value, how much we trea­sure some­thing or some­one. If we live in a soci­ety were things are easy to obtain we may find that show­ing appre­ci­a­tion is dif­fi­cult. If some­thing breaks or is lost we can eas­ily replace it so why trea­sure and cher­ish it? And how about rela­tion­ships, do we truly cher­ish and appre­ci­ate peo­ple that are “instafriends”? Or would we value and cher­ish some­one more if they’d become our friend over time, reveal­ing their inner self slowly as if open­ing up trea­sures to us? What about small ges­tures of kind­ness, some­one hold­ing a door open for us, let­ting us step ahead in line, giv­ing up their seat for us? And then there is nature, all sorts of flora and fauna around us. What if some of it would sud­denly dis­ap­pear, would we notice it and miss it? There are things slowly dis­ap­pear­ing around us and we are often at a loss as to why. Learn­ing to stop, under­stand and show appre­ci­a­tion for these things will make a dif­fer­ence. Show­ing appre­ci­a­tion can change the course of our life sig­nif­i­cantly. It won’t turn the world into a brighter place but it turns us into a light in the darkness.

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