Can you be grateful for your life and still want it to change?
The job gave you a chance when you had little experience. Someone took time to teach you, and you still enjoy working with them. Now the hours leave you exhausted, and you want to look for something else.
Each time you begin an application, you remember how much the job has given you. Leaving starts to feel ungrateful.
But gratitude describes something real about what you have received. It does not settle every decision about what comes next. You can appreciate the opportunity and the people who helped you while recognising that the present arrangement needs to change.
A Spark from The Vision
I desire a life that makes me desire to live; a life with purpose and the right balance of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, so that I love what I have but still have something to work for.
In “I want to be rich”, Innocent describes wanting a life he can love while still having something to work towards. Satisfaction and dissatisfaction both belong in that life. He values purpose and freedom alongside material comfort; having something good does not remove every other thing worth wanting.
That balance is easier to see when you are specific. “I should be grateful for this job” gathers the whole experience into one demand. “I am grateful that my supervisor taught me patiently” names something you can honestly appreciate. “I cannot keep working these hours” names a different truth. Neither statement makes the other false.
You also need not turn the job into a terrible place before you are allowed to leave. Finding fault with every colleague or dismissing everything you learned would make the decision simpler only by making your account less true. Some of what you value may be worth looking for in your next workplace.
Let appreciation help shape the change
Suppose the part you most enjoy is working closely with a small team. You trust each other enough to ask questions, admit mistakes and share difficult jobs. A new role with fewer hours would solve one problem, but if it left you working alone all day, it could remove something you would miss.
Gratitude has given you useful information. You want a change in the hours while keeping some of that companionship. Perhaps there is a different arrangement in the present job. Perhaps you need to look elsewhere. Either way, you understand more clearly what a better situation would contain.
There is a risk at the other extreme too. If every improvement immediately becomes another thing to dismiss, nothing you gain gets much time to matter. A quieter evening is soon ordinary; the hours you once wanted back become invisible. Continuing to want more can coexist with noticing that this particular change has helped.
The balance will not always feel comfortable. You may be sad to leave people you like, even when leaving is the decision you want. That sadness does not prove you have mistaken your needs. It may simply show that the good parts were good.
Related lessons
AI-generated from Innocent Mwatsikesimbe's writing.
Keep a Spark close
Read Spreuke on Android and receive a new Spark each morning.
