Mino Akhtar
2 min readMar 3, 2022

Gratitude-What are you most grateful for and what surprises you?

I am most grateful for having been born at this time on the planet when the darkness of the past still haunts us, and we witness it shapeshifting into different more hidden forms of oppression and exploitation. As more and more darkness into light, it must disappear and that is my fervent prayer and hope. I am even grateful for the ugly wars and violence in this world for they signal an end to the sham way of life that was dominating the world- solely materialistic, obsessed with fame and technology, ignorant of the miraculous web of life that sustains us by a thin thread; heartless and soulless minds hijacked by algorithms and pundits chasing noise and numbers. I am grateful for the beauty of all there is on this amazing planet. We should be worshipping the abundance and the diversity and helping each other thrive, for there is no greater joy than giving.

My Lower Self is grateful to be to be safe, to have food clothing and shelter; to have had an impressive and intelligent birth family with intellectual stars in every satellite family despite the refugee background. I am grateful that my parents came from a refugee family where values and faith pulled them through, and education became the third God. I now get to relish my brilliant relatives on every continent to admire their continuous brave adaptation to shape new multi-cultural identities and to do good while they work or engage in entrepreneurialism.

I am grateful for having had the most amazing life experiences having grown up on four Continents and then getting to see the whole globe again as an international management consultant giving me an eagle’s view of our beautiful diversity and abundance. I am grateful for all the talents I got to inherit and/or develop as they give me a purpose now in my retirement years. When I look back, I do not see conflict but the opportunity to grow and develop, the biggest gift we human have.

My Higher Self is so grateful to be available to give back to family and community and to generate peace and patience in the face of so much chaos and negativity. I am grateful for the ability to contextualize and transcend this drama on a stage, and focus on the here and now, on one person or family at a time, on doing good whenever wherever I can. I am grateful I know the boundaries of my control and do not cry into the night as my less developed soul would in the past. I am a witness to a great human awakening and may it come soon. As Ervin Laszlo says, we have to upshift now.

As I witness my own witnessing, I am surprised at my embrace of all that is dark for I see it as the pathway to the Light. Having avoided conflict was my motto, and now I see it as a steppingstone, which has totally surprised me as I write this.

#WriteHere #InnerPeace

Mino Akhtar
Mino Akhtar

Written by Mino Akhtar

Wall Street escapee, retired, grandmother, coach, speaker, writer, blogger on peace, transformation and reclaiming our insaniyet (humanism)

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