Always Live with Gratitude and Show Appreciation

By Bill Trotter

Having gratitude and showing appreciation is what separates the people we often hear as “having all the luck” from those who complain and blame others for all their perceived problems.

One of the 21 Precepts of the Church of Perfect Liberty (PL) that was revealed to its founder, Reverend Tokuchika Miki by God on September 29, 1947, is: “All Things Progress And Develop.” The meaning of this is that all things improve. The truth is that things or situations in this world basically change and improve but do not get worse. If things are actually getting worse it’s contrary to this basic truth of God and it’s people who are making the mistakes.

God gives blessings for all things to become better and better. Therefore, day by day we human beings have to move in the direction of improvement.

However, sometimes things do get worse than they were previously because people make mistakes, but since they don’t know they are making mistakes they suffer by having various concerns, or they get confused, or they have unnecessary worries that things will really become even worse. If human beings understand the truth in this world they don’t have to suffer so much or face such difficulties.

Reverend Tokuharu Miki (1871-1938), who founded Hito-no-michi, the predecessor of PL, taught that: “The way of human beings toward God is to only have appreciation.” First of all, we should not forget to appreciate God that we are living because He is letting us live. We can show this appreciation by thanking God each time we receive a blessing and give thanks each day for everything that happened throughout the day. Even if we had unpleasant things occur we have to learn to accept them as experiences to help us improve our lives and then give thanks to God that we had the opportunity to learn something through them. If on the other hand, we tend to take such occurrences as a reason to blame others and things, our lives will not improve.

If we don’t have an attitude to appreciate, then we tend to blame God and others for our personal problems and human misfortunes. This negative attitude will definitely prevent us from progressing as human beings.

People who complain about God are blaming Him instead of themselves. This is an indication of their selfishness. Then, with their faith, they only appreciate it when they gain money or when things are going smoothly; basically they are happy only when things meet their own convenience. One can’t really call this as having a true faith. We human beings should even appreciate that somehow we have been able to live one more day just as we are.

There are people we all know who take everything for granted and never show any appreciation to others for their efforts. It’s as if we owed them a living.

In reality however, our present lives in society rely on a multitude of different types of tasks by thousands of people each and every day. As one simple example, just think about the fresh vegetables we eat. We are dependent on the seed companies who provide the seeds to the farmers, then the farmers who grow the vegetables, the distributors who sell them to the stores, the shippers who deliver them and finally the grocery store staff from whom we purchase them. If it’s prepared foods, then there are a few extra levels of effort involved before getting them to market. Moreover, if we think of the cars and trucks we own, the houses and apartments we live in, the clothes on our backs, we begin to realise just how much we depend on others to survive in this society. Just thinking about this should be enough to make us feel grateful for the efforts of others.

Since God has given us all the raw materials we need to survive on this planet, showing appreciation and giving thanks to others, is in essence giving thanks to God.

When something good happens normal human beings can’t help but to feel grateful and express their appreciation.

However when things go well we often like to pat ourselves on the back thinking, “What a great job I did.” If things continue to go well, we are apt to become conceited, thinking: “This is such a snap. I can do this every time.” It’s just when we start to think this way that things suddenly don’t go the way we wanted. To get the results we want, we must do our utmost effort and then, when we are successful, we must thank God. In this way, we may be successful every time, as long as we don’t forget to show our appreciation.

If we don’t have a mind to appreciate, we may have wonderful things happen, but then suddenly we may be unable to have them recur. Often we tend to misunderstand if something went smoothly, thinking it’s because of our own ability. If we think or express with the attitude that we did something great we end up making mistakes or having accidents.

If we have gratitude and show appreciation to God when things are going well, then we can do them even better the next time. However, if we forget to show appreciation and believe it will still go well the next time, then normally we will find we haven’t understood things very well or we’ve forgotten our past experience. Therefore, even if we think we can use the same method for our next effort, we may be unable to do it.

The correct way is to always have pure appreciation for everything, and whenever something happens lets show our appreciation to God. By always being grateful and showing our appreciation whenever the opportunity arises, we will be more successful and lead more enjoyable lives.

(Author’s note: I’ve used the term “God” but in PL we often say Mioya-ookami “the creator of the universe” and we think of God as the whole of everything. Thus one could also substitute “The Universe” for God.)