Life can be hectic at times, one can be sure. Regardless of how dark things may seem, there is so much to be grateful for. Even with this ideal in mind, when I sat down to write a list of elements I was grateful for, the process was slow going. This baffled me as I am a young adult living in America, there are tons of things I take for granted and appreciate more than I’ve ever admitted. I wanted to call attention to some of the general elements most people have to be grateful for. Maybe after you read this, sit down and write your own ‘grateful list’. Try to get to twenty, though if you have more write more. It’s interesting seeing what our minds actually prioritize.

Your Life Is A Gift

Your existence is a multifaceted focal point of the universe. You are not ‘in’ the universe, you are the universe. As you breathe, you accumulate life and as you breathe out you give back life. Infinite potential and growth can not be personified in our current mortal forms with out hang ups. I mean to say that, we get cut so we can understand how we heal. We are blessed to have the ability to understand the wealth of experience the universe offers. Sometimes it is easy to lose track of this.

When I’m stuck in a rut or depressed, I relate my emotions and mindset to that of an unknown alien parsecs away. I think about how a culture may revel in the state I am currently not content with. I figure out how their culture evolved this way and draw parallels. Just a thought.

Don’t Let The Man Get You Down

Jobs can suck if you let them. But only if you let them! I personally never fully enjoyed much of my time spent waiting or in retail. But I did always try my best and set my own objectives. Since you’ve agreed to society’s money game you can lift up the spirits of those around you.

Health Is Always a Balancing Act

Our health is something we take for granted until some event takes it from us. Don’t wait till you can’t do something to appreciate it. Go! Run, jump and play games! More importantly don’t lock yourself in a dark room filling it with angst over what could be. Enjoy what you have while you have it, and do your best to keep it.

Technology Is Tool, Not A Burden

Technology has been hyped up to the point that it practically has a religious following. Rather than draw allusions to Asimov’s writings, I’ll point out that technology is the same as a hammer or scale or your mind.  It is useful to a point but when we push it past that point it starts to fail. We get upset because technological advances are only helping so much. People have been achieving nirvana for centuries before the internet. You have the tools you need for a better life all around you, you need only use the right tools.

The Future Is On It’s Way

The past isn’t the clearest marker of the future. Our expectations only set us up for failure. It too easy to get caught up in our ideas of the future. Realize though that our versions of the future are directly based off our fears. The future will be exactly what we fear or the polar opposite. Why would you ever limit yourself to projections based off fear? The possibilities are endless.

Friends And Family

These are the people that know you the best. They have stuck with you through thick and thin. If they haven’t I guarantee there is still love there. In this context, this asset is likely to devolve into a regret. Do you really want to regret never picking up the phone and at least trying? The people in your life are there for a reason and everyday should be a celebration of this bond.

Not Just An Escape

Media is an iffy subject. I agree that most of it is mindless, brain damaging opiates for the masses. But this article is a form of media, so I must assume there are real people sending sincere messages through art. Look some of it up! I’m grateful for the ability to diffuse my anxiety or build my happiness on the presentations of others. This affirmation of the modern world gives me hope for my present world.

Doctor Carl Jung was a revolutionary Swiss psychiatrist, from the early 1900’s  who founded the field of analytical psychology. While mainly  noted for -his work as a pioneering psychiatrist, he was well rounded, forward thinking student of philosophy, anthropology, archaeology, literature and religious practices. He was a very talented writer as well, though many of his works were not published until after his death. The new branch of psychiatry he developed is still practiced to this day. It focuses on the importance of the individual psyche and the personal quest for for ‘wholeness’. In the process of developing analytic psychiatry he branded concepts such as the archetype, the collective unconscious, (a) complex and extroversion vs introversion.

Dr. Jung was concerned with individual development in relation to society. He developed the now common place concepts used to describe different personalities and their make up. Personal growth had priority of his studies that he sought to quantify and qualify. He realized that, when talking about such personal elements of life, they were very subjective. By studying people as individuals he sought to make the human experience less mysterious. He wanted to make it easier for people to relate to one another.

One way Dr. Jung sought to bridge the gaps between people, was with the term ‘archetypes’. It can be used  to bridge many abstract elements to each other or ground them to  real world issues or culture. Archetype is a very typical example of a person, place, thing or situation. It can also refer to an original work that has been imitated or refer to a recurring symbol or motif in literature, art or mythology. By explaining these very abstract concepts in plain and easy to understand terms, Dr. Jung was a forward thinking man. Many philosophers, doctors, scientists and politians have used the platform Dr. Jung created to build on.

25 OF THE MOST THOUGHT PROVOKING CARL JUNG QUOTES

1. There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

2. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

3. The word ‘happiness’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

4. In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

5. The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

6. A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

7. It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

8. Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

9. Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

10. It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.

11. Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.

12. The collective unconscious consists of the sum of the instincts and their correlates, the archetypes. Just as everybody possesses instincts, so he also possesses a stock of archetypal images.

13. Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration?

14. The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

15. Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

16. For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself

17. Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.

18. Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us.

19. All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

20. Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.