Don't Lose The Moon While Counting The Stars

“Kung yung tinapay nga na iniwan mo sa mesa may kumukuha, yun pa kayang mga bagay na mahalaga sa'yo? Wala nang nagtatagal sa panahong ito kaya kung may iiwan ka, siguraduhin mong hindi na iyon mahalaga.” –Bob Ong

This has always been one of the most striking quotes for me. I know it may sound a little cliché, but if we think about, it only tells us that we should give importance to the things that we have because if we don’t, we might end up losing them.

This, however, is one of the biggest flaws of people: We take things and people for granted. I’m pretty sure each of us has taken something or someone for granted. May it be a friend, a family member or a special someone. But have you ever wondered why we take the things and the people we have for granted? The answer is simple, my friends, it’s because we are always DISCONTENTED.

Since these people always stick around for us—doing us favors, helping us with things, and constantly making us feel special—we tend to overlook all the things that they have done or are doing for us and desire for additional things in other people. Some may say that it is because there is no ‘challenge’ when the other person gives you almost everything or some may say that they just don’t like the other person. What we don’t realize is that our discontentment leads to our lack of appreciation; we don’t appreciate how blessed we are to have these people who constantly remember and take care of our welfare, so we end up taking them for granted or ignoring them.

What we don’t realize is that in this temporal world, nothing lasts forever. We might end up losing these people we are taking for granted. Remember that these people are rational beings with intellect and free will; meaning, they have knowledge to understand when someone is taking them for granted and they have the freedom to choose to let go. People are not robots, they have feelings and other people’s actions and thoughts can hurt them. They can get tired of doing things especially when they feel underappreciated and we’d end up losing them. Then we will realize their worth and we’ll start missing them and we’ll regret that we took them for granted, but it is too late to take them back.

Maybe if we don’t want to live our lives in regrets, we should start realizing the importance of every people in our lives; we should learn to appreciate them and to thank them for their affection and the sacrifices they made for our sake. To sum it all up, “we should never ignore the person who loves us, cares for us, and misses us. Because one day, we might wake up from our sleep and realize that we lost the moon while counting the stars.”