Live For Them

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Perspective-based Gratitude

Have you ever woke up from a terrible nightmare only to find relief and a new sense of contentment for the day?

The Problem

The mind tends to normalize and take for granted whatever environment it's in, even if it's paradise. This can be detrimental to your mental well-being and may contribute to why people who seemingly have everything don't frequently appear to be any more content or happier; perhaps even less so.

Solution Theory: Observe moments of hardship and tragedy and foster an emotional connection while simultaneously reflecting on things you're grateful and that you aren't in that predicament.

By viewing hardship, you begin to distinguish the things you've come to take for granted. Essentially a re-calibration.

TL;DR

Turning tragedy, grief, pain of others into action and gratitude.
To provoke an emotional response and invoke empathy.
To imbue a degree of stoicism.

Background

I always hated that feeling that the mind naturally wants to take for granted the good things to the point where paradise itself would become numbing... How it always wants to center on the negativity, no matter how increasingly trivial. This can of course impact state of mind greatly. Travel and volunteering are two ways to help buck this stagnation, but I'm trying something different here. The idea manifested most strongly after watching the film, "Jo Jo Rabbit" actually. Completely satirical and outright funny at times, it left you with a sense of shock at what these children and others like them had to go through during WWII. It inspired and motivated me to do better on their behalf... To Live For Them and not waste what they couldn't have. Sure it was fictional but it was beautifully story-crafted to symbolize what so many real people went through.

It's thought that our unique "simulator" within our prefrontal cortex that is unique to humans was thought to be used to "predict" both positive and negative consequences and help calculate risk-assessment. Such instances where you make connections with the struggles of others may activate this region and help allow you appreciate the little things once again.

I'll be honest, I can't find much information on this topic and so if people have more insight and this is explored under certain nomenclature, please let me know!

Rules:

(1) - No outright gore; anything teetering on the line should be NSFW and described in comments.

(2) - Be respectful both to others here, as well as to the subjects of submission. We're thoughtful, respectful observers.

Submitters are encouraged to submit content that elicited an emotional reaction and grounding and renewed appreciation for what they have, themselves. They, along with other commenters are encouraged to write about how it makes them feel.

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lennybird

A Story of Two Fathers; Unimaginable Grief and Despair. (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by lennybird to c/liveforthem

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On the left, a Ukrainian man who lost all his entire family pictured, murdered in a missile-strike by Russia.

On the right, a Palestinian man picking up the birth certificates for his 3-day-old twins when his wife and twins were murdered in a missile-strike by Israel.

All morning I haven't been able to shake the parallel fates of these two fathers. It adds another level of connection when I can simply look over to my healthy kids cheerfully playing, oblivious to such horrors.

My wife has a stressful job where she sees pretty crazy stuff. It helps keep her grounded. Nevertheless the "little things" can add up. So it's a common refrain for us to say, "At least our kids aren't in Ukraine or Gaza...Or Syria... Or Yemen..." and so on — and it's so unbelievably fucked that this happened at all because of propaganda and territorial conquest, something that we just can't seem to shake. That we cannot grasp that we're one people all on this planet just trying to work together. Isn't life hard enough as it is? Yet these psychopaths persist, From Sinwar to Putin to Netanyahu, and they continue to dupe masses to do the dirty work on their behalf.

Meanwhile there seems to be a clear double-standard and profound cognitive dissonance around the world in recognizing the tragedy of one of these over the other. I hope we can equalize our outrage for these and recognize that it's the innocent civilians caught in between who always suffer the most.

I don't know what more there is to say but what is already felt. I just don't know how a father can go on. I can only live for them and in some way or another make the world a little better.

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[–] Professorozone 2 points 3 months ago

Nicely stated.