Taking for granted

There are things in all of our lives that we take for granted. It is often a privilege that we do not realise.

How many times have you called the power station on a normal day, just to tell them what a great job they have been doing? On the contrary, if there is no power, it would not take too long to call up the power station to find out what the hell was going on.

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

I remember having the same conversation 7 years ago with Shashank of Razorpay. When a payment gateway works as it is intended to, nobody calls and says “today I got all of my payments. Thanks, guys!” If the gateway goes down for a moment, they used to get a tsunami of calls and tickets raised on their site. 

We take several things for granted in life. Work, relationship, services. If a coworker delivers what they are supposed to, you would probably just assume that they are doing their job. This is especially true if their job is mundane, like that of a receptionist. But if they fail to deliver in one instance the criticism would be swift. 

I know people who have been in relationships where for years they have had consistent and predictable partners. They would not sing praises. They would assume it is what it is. But let that one instance arrive where their partner behaves in an uncharacteristic manner and all hell would break loose.

The truth is consistency is the hardest thing to deliver. None of us feels the same on two different days. Not everything works the same on two different days. Quite literally nothing is the same on any given day.

It is a blessing that in such times we can take certain things for granted and we need to be really thankful for it.