Distinguished

Kagamay da ini sweldo nan maestra! A complain often overheard from a teacher or any other government employee. Another teacher posted on social media the different entry point salaries of teachers in other countries highlighting the Philippines as the lowest with P20,000 as the basic income per month. One could really wonder, why are they complaining? They are blessed with jobs, right? There are those who are jobless and are trying their best to find one.

Indeed, appreciation is a difficult competency to attain.

Appreciation or gratitude is “an emotion that is typically evoked when one receives costly, unexpected, and intentionally rendered benefits, and is thought to play a key role in regulating the initiation and maintenance of social relationships” (Forster et al., 2017).

The Harvard Medical School defines it as a thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether tangible or intangible. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives … As a result; gratitude also helps people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals–whether to other people, nature, or a higher power.

There are people, friends and even family members who complain a lot. This is maybe caused by training the mind to dwell on the negative side rather than looking for the positive/beauty in a situation. There might be traumas which cause them to complain a lot they have become unappreciative.

A number of authors have espoused a theoretical relationship between gratitude and well-being. In a very pragmatic way, this association seems logical. Experiencing gratitude, thankfulness, and appreciation tends to foster positive feelings, which in turn, contribute to one's overall sense of well-being. Therefore, gratitude appears to be one component, among many components, that contributes to an individual's well-being (Sansone, 2010).

The people who manifest positive energy have the tendency to have positive dispositions and eventually dwell on happy and peaceful spheres. The ones who bring with them negative vibrations often feel unease, discomfort which could eventually turn out to become illnesses in the mind and even body.

Why are they unappreciative? Here are some manifestations according to powerofpositivity.com:

People who aren’t thankful are always in need of some kind of assistance. Whether it is help with bills, watching the kids or giving them a ride. They always need something from you. They are in a perpetual state of emergency and it is usually things they create themselves either through poor judgment or on purpose in order to create the drama they feed on.

The thing is that unless they need something from you, then you never hear from them. They only turn to you for friendship when they are in a jam. You will never hear them say “Hey let me take you out to lunch” or “let me help you with that.” If everything is going fine then you don’t exist in their world anymore.

They may feel entitled to your help either because you are family or they feel that you owe them something for being their friend. They aren’t grateful because they feel they have earned your help and you are just paying them back.

Despite all of your help ungrateful people will turn on you. They will talk behind your back. They will say that you never help them. That they do all of the work and you are the ungrateful sponge. Despite all you have done for them they will tell their friends or other family members what a horrible person you are in order to get more sympathy from people who can’t help them.

Ungrateful people will never let you forget that one time you weren’t able to help them. Whether it was because of time constraints or lack of funds it doesn’t matter. They will hold that guilt over you until the end of time.

Contemporary research, though, paints a more complicated picture of ingratitude. People who are ungrateful tend to be characterized by an excessive sense of self-importance, arrogance, vanity, and an unquenchable need for admiration and approval. Narcissists reject the ties that bind people into relationships of reciprocity. They expect special favors and feel no need to pay back or pay forward.

So, maybe these people who are complaining are very good with their jobs. The teachers who are complaining about their “meager” salaries are highly-proficient or even distinguished?

Or simply they just complain and find faults because they feel that they are THE BEST?