On Taking Things For Granted

Blue skies epitomize freedom from worldly cares. Freely pondering what's above represents an understated but elegant element of our existence. However, distractions - whether buildings, weather patterns or thoughts clouding our minds - get in the way. Nevertheless, when the blue sky wholly presents itself to us, we take it for granted.

Our tendency to take vital aspects of our lives for granted produces a tremendous amount of unnecessary psychological suffering. Throughout this discussion, I'll examine how we take things for granted. Then, I'll use contemplative inquiries and experiential experiments to develop a few pragmatic solutions. Finally, I'll extend the solutions to invigorate our pursuit of true freedom from mental anguish.

Rooted in Communication

Taking things for granted manifests from assumptions we learn while developing our communication ability.

The Deictic Center

Communication fundamentally depends on discriminating from the deictic center, the here and now location in space-time distinguishing inside-my-head from outside-my-head. Only from here can you differentiate this here from that there. Only from now can I separate the present from the past and future. In a vacuum, demonstrative pronouns like here, there, this and that carry no meaning. From my deictic center, I can identify concepts I'm experiencing and label them with more descriptive terms. For example, I feel this when I do that can become I feel joy when I do the act of eating ice cream. In fact, this and that could be replaced with an infinite set of infinite terms.

Like the processes of breathing and hormonal regulation, deictic discrimination seems so essential to your being that you can live without knowing how you do it. If you trace, in your mind's eye, its development back to your beginning, you'll realize that it's likely one of the first things you take for granted. Thus, understanding your deictic center's inner mechanics could help you live better.

As infants exploring our environment, we perceive the world as a single unified field. Only while we're toddlers do the boundaries of our deictic centers, the points from which we speak, begin solidifying. We learn to follow the guidance of our innate curiosity to make sense of the world around us. As beings growing comfortable with our surroundings, our first phase of joy likely involves ascribing the tiniest iota of meaning to our existence. This is mom. That is dad. Here is cold. There is warm.

Soon enough, we discover an ability to share meaning with others. When you called your mother mama for the first time, you inspired a flood of pleasant emotions in her mind and heart. Recognizing your capacity to inspire delight in others likely initiated your second phase of joy. A ripening fruit from the tree of the cosmos, you discover companions for your adventure of life.

Abundant Assumptions

After intuitively understanding deictic discrimination, proper communication heavily relies on many assumptions. The previous sentence contained 12 words arranged in a "dependent clause-comma-independent clause" pattern. I assume you know how the word meanings collaborate to produce a meaningful sentence. Conversely, you assume my word choice indicates particular meanings and that I know proper sentence construction. We unconsciously make these assumptions almost every time - this may be one of the few times we do so consciously.

How It Manifests Daily

While the formation of the deictic center and numerous assumptions enable communication, they lay the foundations for my taking things for granted. Without thinking, I habitually overlook seemingly meager but truly substantial aspects of my experience. For example, my unconscious assumption here that water will run when I turn on the faucet there takes our water infrastructure for granted. My unconscious assumption here that my Kindle will charge when I plug it in there takes our electrical infrastructure for granted. My unconscious assumption here that eggs are stocked on the grocery shelf there takes our food infrastructure for granted.

In fact, we could think of language as our linguistic infrastructure. Himself a linguistic master, Shakespeare superimposed his plays against a backdrop of vibrant sets. However, we tend to take these sets for granted once it's safe to assume their characteristics. Similarly, like the sets of these plays, we forget the context of our surroundings as we float through them.

Our minds gravitate toward the most poignant pieces of our awareness while the rest slips away into the unseen realm of the assumed. Taking our context for granted means glossing over large and significant elements like forgetting the world, the climate and the ocean when looking at the tip of an iceberg.

Contemplative Solutions

The Without Contemplation

To confront my seemingly instinctual impulse to take matters of great significance for granted, I've found negative visualization contemplations tremendously helpful. How would the quality of my life situation change without the water, electrical and food infrastructures supporting me? In their absence, matters of great significance establish their necessity. Your stomach occupies your awareness when it's empty or upset. Your lungs capture your attention when they're gasping for air. Think about what would happen if our waste management infrastructure took a week off - just one week!

Proper function gets no consideration, so take some time to ask: what would my life be like without [the significant matter]?

The Adjacent Contemplation

Difficulties arise when using the without contemplation on things of enormous size. Tough to imagine life without that ball of fire in the sky, right? For such cases, I suggest giving yourself a frame of reference. Place another object in your visual field, roughly adjacent to the big thing. For example: to contemplate the sun's size, hold up a round object like a grape near the sun so that its size roughly matches that of the sun. Please take great care not to look at the sun!! Holding the reference object at arm's length away from your eyes should be fine. Note that the earth orbits the sun at an average distance of 93 million miles. If you just tried this exercise out, you may have felt awe and, if you're lucky, rapture. For a brief moment, your habit of taking things for granted loosened its grip and gave you the free space to experience joy.

Whenever you find yourself taking large things for granted, simply ask: how big does [the large thing] seem after putting another object adjacent to it in my visual field?

The Edge Contemplation

Unfortunately, if we applied the without and adjacent contemplations to the clear blue sky, I think our efforts still fall short. Perhaps, an indication of the limits of my mind's eye, I imagine nighttime if I look up at the blue sky and contemplate its absence. Placing something like a grape in front of the blue sky doesn't hint at its actual size. Let's assume a big, friendly cloud floated by to provide a helpful frame of reference. Though an average cumulus cloud of 1 cubic kilometer weighs ~1.4 billion pounds and an equal volume of dry air weighs ~2.2 billion pounds 🤯, I still don't have intuitive access to the sky's size.

As such, I further propose contemplating its boundaries. The sky's true perceived size emerges once you observe the horizon and trace the edges. If you see miles and miles of the sky filled with clouds, you can quickly recognize its reach, its weight, its true extent. In fact, you can absolutely appreciate the sky's size even without your cumulus compadres.

If something large occupies most of your visual field, happily inquire: where's the edge of [the large thing] I see, and how far away is that from me?

On Pursuing True Freedom

The without, adjacent and edge contemplations faithfully remedy our tendency to take things for granted, but do they go all the way? Though the blue sky feels like the single biggest thing we might see in our lives, I'd argue that there's one thing you can see that's larger than every other thing: your awareness itself.

A bounded sense of self seems to accompany our default mode of perception. As I walk through my room, I see its walls. I feel my keyboard's keys as I type on it. My senses draw the line between me and not-me, the boundary between self and other. To investigate this premise, try the following experiential experiments.

Investigating The Boundaries Of Being

At your earliest convenience, sit in a relatively confined space that has boundaries within a short touching distance - i.e., you can easily touch the boundaries. I think the backseat of a car is perfect, but a smaller room with a lower ceiling works, too. Move to the center of the space. Now, from the center, slowly touch the boundary to your right, or touch the door to your right if you're in a car. Then, return to the center. Touch the boundary on the left or the door to your left, and then return to the center. Touch the boundary above you or the ceiling, then return to the center. Finally, touch the boundary below you or the floor, and return to the center. Mindfully make a mental note of what it's like to touch your boundaries.

Now, gently plant your hands on your knees or your thighs. In a relaxed manner, choose a point in front of you on which you can focus your gaze. Now, slowly look at the boundary on your right. If possible, keep your hands, feet, shoulders, neck and eyelids still. Move your eyes slow enough that you only feel your eye muscles working - please don't strain yourself, though! Then, return your gaze to the focal point. Look at the boundary on the left and then return your gaze to the focal point. Look at the boundary above you and then return your gaze to the focal point. Finally, look at the boundary below you and return your gaze to the focal point. Mindfully make a mental note of what it's like to see your boundaries.

To conclude the exercise, close your eyes and remain still. Only move your eyes to look right, left, above and below. Placing your palms over your eyes could help you practice the exercise in complete darkness, but that's not necessary. Like a fish noticing the water in which it swims, you can feel the contents of your being in this space. What do the boundaries of your being look like if there's anything to see? What do the boundaries of your being feel like if there's anything to touch? How do they compare to touching and seeing your boundaries in the previous experiments?

Here's a brief description of my experience. With my eyes closed, I fail to see a clear boundary between me and not-me. Though the feeling of my eyes moving confirms that I'm looking in a different direction, I can't find a single seam that appears to me - it's truly seamless. In fact, nothing within this space can serve as a comparative frame of reference. There's no way I can contemplate its absence, the annihilation of my being, because doing so implies my being. I feel justified in describing the space as uncontained, infinite, boundless and everlasting. Still, they somehow feel inadequate for fully capturing its extent.

In looking at our beings, failing to answer the without, adjacent and edge contemplations subtly but successfully reveals our essential infrastructure, the life of the body. While the blue sky, the cumulus clouds and the sun play important roles within an unfathomable cosmic infrastructure, your very act of perceiving it all depends on your awareness. Similarly, the linguistic, food, electrical, and water infrastructures appear within your awareness. From zero distance, at the genesis of perception, the infrastructure of your essence transcends all others. Undoubtedly, I incessantly take something so large and so significant for granted.

Final Thoughts

We regularly fail to consider who and what we are if we consider them at all. While single words fall short of capturing the quintessence of our nature, they affirm what we're not. Contained, bounded, limited, finite, all are antitheses to our awareness. They are what you are not.

If you've reverently observed what's in front of you from the top of a mountain, you've felt this before. If you lost that feeling of me while creating something, you've felt this before. An experience of true mindfulness, even for a moment, dissolves the deictic center's essential but illusory boundary, the line separating me from not-me.

He who feels no difference between "now" and "then" has reached the realm of Reality.
~Jetsun Milarepa, The Eight [Supreme] Realms

Philosophy, or any wisdom tradition, employs contemplation to combat our tendency to take things, especially the large and the significant, for granted. Coming from the Latin word contemplari meaning "to gaze and observe attentively" and "to mark out the space for a temple," the word contemplate and its variations tremendously assisted me throughout this discussion. One must first mindfully observe any concept or perception to properly consider it. In addition to inoculating you against taking the object of contemplation for granted, the mere act of contemplation emphasizes the Divinity inherent to your awareness. Whether contemplating for piety or for levity, for habit or for hobby, for leisure or for adventure, you embark on each journey from the sacred space of your awareness.

The entire ocean of your awareness, including each of your senses, stitches all that was, is and will be into this seamless moment. Your true nature, your essence, subtly orchestrates your experience. In truth, a blue sky wholly presenting itself to you encompasses but a mere fraction of what you are. The next time you walk outside and spy the sky, mindfully contemplate your experience and let your self-conception gently unravel.

To see through the deictic center as the here and now, to see all things unified as one thing is to see for us all :)

first time reading? please check out the sailing manual for helpful guidance!