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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

A Lesson in Appreciation

by

20120602

Shock... de­nial...and then com­plete numb­ness. That's how I felt when I found out that one of my teach­ers at school had passed away last Oc­to­ber. I felt shock be­cause she had taught me the day be­fore, on Fri­day, and she seemed fine. I couldn't come to terms with the fact that she was teach­ing me one day and gone the next. How was it pos­si­ble, I asked my­self, for some­one to cease to ex­ist so sud­den­ly and un­ex­pect­ed­ly? Who would've thought? Then I felt de­nial be­cause I kept think­ing: My teacher? Dead? No! Then I was at the point where I had nei­ther ac­cept­ed nor de­nied the fact that she was dead. That's where the numb­ness came in. As my teacher, she was a part of my every­day life. Not once did I stop to think: 'I won­der how Miss is do­ing to­day?' And that brings me to an im­por­tant les­son: Ap­pre­ci­a­tion. Tak­ing peo­ple and things for grant­ed is a uni­ver­sal fault. Our par­ents, sib­lings, rel­a­tives, teach­ers and friends are al­ways there. In our minds, they're not go­ing any­where. And we treat them how­ev­er, tell them what­ev­er and apol­o­gise when­ev­er. We don't stop to think about what the per­son re­al­ly means to us. 'You don't know what you've got un­til it's gone' is a fit­ting state­ment. It is amaz­ing what it takes for us to re­alise how much a per­son means to us. It takes some­thing dras­tic, shock­ing and life-chang­ing like death. It's true. It's on­ly when the per­son is torn from our lives and out of our reach that we be­gin to think about his/her im­pact on us and his/her val­ue as a per­son. It hits us like a brick. Just yes­ter­day she was here and now...she's gone. It's on­ly now that the re­gret and shame comes flood­ing back be­cause we re­alise we could have been more pleas­ant and wel­com­ing and there was so much more we could have done while he/she was alive. Why is it that the ap­pre­ci­a­tion comes on­ly af­ter death?

Now, the re­al ques­tion is: Do we ever learn? We tell our­selves "yes, this has been a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, we re­al­ly need to show ap­pre­ci­a­tion, com­pas­sion and sym­pa­thy", but it's hard to live life with the end in mind. We don't go about our dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties and in­ter­ac­tions think­ing, 'OMG, she could be gone to­mor­row, I shouldn't ar­gue with her'. No one func­tions in that way. We're so used to hav­ing fam­i­ly, teach­ers and friends around that we nev­er stop to think about what life would be like if they were gone. No won­der it takes death to jolt us to re­al­i­ty. It's a vi­cious, on­go­ing cy­cle be­cause no mat­ter how good we try to be, when that per­son is gone, we won't feel as if we were the best we could have been to that per­son. Too much will nev­er be enough. Sud­den death jolts us in­to the shock­ing re­al­i­sa­tion that this life is so tran­sient, so com­plex, that we can't even be­gin to imag­ine the mean­ing of things. For a while, we re­main in that on­go­ing state of re­flec­tive shock, think­ing about all the things we need to change in our own lives. How­ev­er, when the shock wears off, is it not in our hu­man na­ture to fall right back in­to our un­grate­ful habits? Can we re­al­ly help it? Or are we, as hu­mans, pre­dis­posed to this na­ture of in­grat­i­tude? Maybe it's time to change our mind­set and make an ef­fort to be more ap­pre­cia­tive. Yes, old habits do die hard, but that doesn't mean it's im­pos­si­ble to change our ways. It may be a chal­lenge, but it is one we all need to face head on. We need to learn to ap­pre­ci­ate those around us. Don't hold grudges, don't be un­nec­es­sar­i­ly mean and don't gos­sip about peo­ple, be­cause you don't know the whole sto­ry. You nev­er know what some­one is go­ing through at any giv­en mo­ment, so treat peo­ple with the re­spect and kind­ness that they de­serve. Hard as it may be, we must live with an at­ti­tude of grat­i­tude, and re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the val­ue of each per­son we en­counter. My teacher was love­ly, car­ing and ded­i­cat­ed. Sad­ly, it's on­ly af­ter her death that we start­ed see­ing the big­ger pic­ture. She rose above her own dis­tress to teach all her class­es and push on with our syl­labus. We didn't ex­pect her to be here one day and gone the next. This ar­ti­cle is ded­i­cat­ed to my beloved teacher; thank you for your ded­i­ca­tion, your will­ing­ness to teach and to share your knowl­edge, your car­ing at­ti­tude and your de­ter­mi­na­tion to push on de­spite dis­mal cir­cum­stances. Just as the adage says, 'Some­thing good al­ways comes out of a bad ex­pe­ri­ence'. Al­though death is a mourn­ful thing, this ex­pe­ri­ence has taught us a very im­por­tant les­son. Hope­ful­ly, we can all learn to be more ap­pre­cia­tive and show our kind­ness and grat­i­tude to oth­ers in the way we treat them in our dai­ly lives.


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