Live For Them
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
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Turning tragedy, grief, pain of others into action and gratitude.
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To provoke an emotional response and invoke empathy.
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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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From Wikipedia:
Shortly after midnight on 23 March 1994, the aircraft was en route from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow to Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong, with 75 occupants aboard, of whom 63 were passengers.[4][7][8] Relief pilot Kudrinsky was taking his two children on their first international flight, and they were brought to the cockpit while he was on duty.[9] Five people were thus on the flight deck: Kudrinsky, co-pilot Piskaryov, Kudrinsky's son Eldar (age 15) and daughter Yana (age 13),[10] and another pilot, Vladimir Makarov, who was flying as a passenger.[11][page needed]
With the autopilot active, Kudrinsky, against regulations, let the children sit at the controls.[9][12][13] Yana took the pilot's left front seat at 00:43. Kudrinsky adjusted the autopilot heading to give her the impression that she was turning the plane, though she actually had no control of the aircraft. Shortly thereafter, at 00:51, Eldar occupied the pilot's seat.[9] Unlike his sister, Eldar applied enough force to the control column to contradict the autopilot for 30 seconds.
Just under four minutes after Eldar occupied pilot's seat, this caused the flight computer to switch the plane's ailerons to manual control, while maintaining control over the other flight systems. Eldar was now in partial control of the aircraft.[14][15] A silent indicator light came on to alert the pilots to this partial disengagement. The pilots, who had previously flown Soviet-designed planes that had audible warning signals, apparently failed to notice it.[16]
Eldar was the first to notice a problem, when he observed that the plane was banking right. Shortly after, the flight path indicator changed to show the new flight path of the aircraft as it turned. Since the turn was continuous, the resulting predicted flight path drawn on screen was a 180° turn. This indication is similar to those shown when in a holding pattern, where a 180° turn is required to remain in a stable position. This confused the pilots for nine seconds, during which time the plane banked past a 45° angle to almost 90°, steeper than the design allowed. The A310 cannot turn this steeply while maintaining altitude, and the plane started to descend quickly. The increased g-forces on the pilots and crew made regaining control extremely difficult for them. The autopilot, which no longer controlled the ailerons, used its other controls to compensate, pitching the nose up and increasing thrust. As a result, the plane began to stall; the autopilot, unable to cope, disengaged completely. A second, larger indicator light came on to alert the pilots of the complete disengagement, and this time they did notice it. At the same time, the autopilot's display screen went blank. To recover from the stall, an automatic system lowered the nose and put the plane into a nosedive.[6] The reduced g-forces enabled Kudrinsky to retake his seat. Piskaryov then managed to pull out of the dive, but over-corrected, putting the plane in an almost vertical ascent, again stalling the plane, causing the plane to enter a spin. During the spin, Kudrinsky managed to almost recover the plane, but he pulled back too aggressively, causing their speed to drop, and then a rudder input sent the plane into a second spin, only this time they entered a flat spin. Although Kudrinsky and Piskaryov managed to regain control again and leveled out the wings, they did not know how far they had descended during the crisis and their altitude by then was too low to recover. The plane crashed at 00:58 in a flat attitude at high vertical speed, estimated at 70 m/s (140 kn; 160 mph; 250 km/h).[17] All 75 occupants died on impact.[7][18]
The aircraft crashed with its landing gear up, and all passengers had been prepared for an emergency, as they were strapped into their seats.[17] No distress calls were made before the crash.[3] Despite the struggles of both pilots to save the aircraft, it was later concluded that if they had simply let go of the control column after the first spin, aerodynamic principles would have caused the plane to return to level flight, thus preventing the crash.[18] There was no evidence of a technical failure in the plane.[11][19]