“I’ll do it later.”
This is the phrase that, as a teenager, I hear every day in multiple different scenarios; this is the phrase I still regret to this day.
The days leading up to my grandpa’s passing, I tried to remind him that I loved him every single day, even when he couldn’t respond, even when I wasn’t sure he could hear me. Moments before he took his final breath, my dad unknowingly told me to go whisper in his ear as he laid unconscious that I love him. I told my dad I’d do it later because I figured I had the time, but I was wrong.
Even though we, as humans, don’t entirely capture the importance of something until it’s gone, it is important that we realize what we have in our lives before it’s taken from us. I was lucky enough to have 13 years of memories with my grandpa to be thankful for and appreciate rather than that one memory to regret and dwell on.
Living a life full of regret is like living a life full of darkness. The regret can consume you more than the grief itself. We have to read every page of a book in detail to understand the end, but if there comes a page where you stop paying attention, there’s a chance you won’t understand something later on. It is important to be grateful for things happening in the moment as much as possible because we never know when they’ll be taken from us; the end of a book is inevitable, but as a reader, we don’t get to pick when we will see that end.
Taking things for granted isn’t just limited to the people in our lives. We take things for granted every day. There are things we are blessed to witness daily that some will never experience in their lifetime. Things that we loosely throw around and degrade are things that some constantly long for. Whether it be relationships, experiences or materialistic items, the little things that make our life what it is are worth being grateful for.
Last year, our world lost 61 million people, but it gained 134 million. With 365 days in a year and 61 million deaths averaging to 167,123 deaths a day, there are many ways to view every aspect of our world. There’s something to be thankful for every day of our lives even if it’s just waking up and being able to breathe in the fresh air.
The sunrise we often dread waking up early for, but love to see, is someone’s last. The sunset we get out of the house to take a photo of is someone’s last. The water we drink and the food we eat is something others don’t have. The fresh air we take in is something some people can’t imagine experiencing. The people we surround ourselves with is something others can’t fathom having by their side. The seemingly insignificant moments that go by every passing second are someone’s last and someone’s first, but we are lucky enough to have multiple moments throughout our life to be grateful for.
