Taking Things for Granted
by
Andrew Bard Schmookler

Today I'd like to talk about a tendency I think most, if not all, of us share: namely, the tendency to take things for granted, not to notice sufficiently either how fortunate we are in many ways or how bad some other things are. We get used to things, and just take them for granted: this is just the way things are.

When we experience some sudden change in fortunes, we may react strongly to the change. If we fall in love, that's pretty exciting. If we win the lottery, we may feel elated at the sudden improvement in our fortunes. If we get a toothache, we may be unable to notice anything else. If we are suddenly unemployed, we may feel devastated.

But if something --good or bad-- goes on long enough, we may lose our ability to register it.

All of us are fortunate to live in a free and prosperous country, but this too we often take for granted. Most of us have the good luck to have eyes that see and ears that hear, but how often do we give thanks for these blessings?

I wake up every day with a view of the beautiful mountains of this area, but I am not reliably moved by that beauty the way my friends from the city are when they first arrive. I am blessed with a happy and loving family, but most of the time I just take that for granted.

Most religions teach that it is of great value to recognize and feel gratitude for the blessings we enjoy. But it isn't always easy, so readily do we become accustomed to any of life's great goods.

I'd like to ask our listeners to share their experiences, and their thoughts, around this issue: the taking of good things for granted, and the giving thanks for blessings.

If blessings make up part of this phenomenon, our blindness also to our curses is another. Wonderful things are not all of what is chronic --and hence invisible-- in our lives. Just as we may take no note of being able to say what we think and to eat our fill, so also can we become inured to conditions that injure or deaden us.

Year after year, school may be boring-- but after a while it's like a fish not noticing water. As adults we may toil at joyless jobs, but we stop registering the lack of joy. Like having enough to eat, that's just the way life is. People may live for decades in loveless marriages or unhappy families, without ever tuning in on the toll their situation takes on them. Chronic illness or just malaise, too, can become so familiar as to cease registering on the screen of our consciousness.

It's a kind of anesthesia, and thus may serve a purpose: some of the realities of our lives are painful to experience fully. But there's a down side, too. In order not to feel pain we have to deaden ourselves. And it's not just the pain we lose our ability to experience. Life is to precious and short to waste. Also, sometimes it is when we stop taking our curses for granted that we can rise up and make some life-serving changes.

Just as it is important to count our blessings, to also can tuning in our curses be important. Most of the great breakthroughs of history --in government, in religion, in the arts-- depended on some people being willing to break through the taking for granted, to feel the pain and take measures to make changes.

So I would like to invite our listeners also to share any experiences and thoughts they have about this part of the issue: about not noticing how bad things are, and about coming to recognize the painful realities.

Blessings and curses, our blindness to them, and the value of being alive to both: those comprise the topic for today.