how to be aware in an unaware world

Author: Josh Avery

Appreciation
Following up my last post on humankind, and all the reasons to be there for one another more now than ever, I wanted to reflect on how mindfulness and appreciation are two of the most connected topics.
With more awareness, we see the whole picture of our lives, neither good or bad, right or wrong, but what simply is.
One thing I have found rises to the top of simple awareness however is an appreciation for everyone and everything around me.
Anywho, this is the aim of this post, to uncover not just what appreciation does to us, but how to cultivate and feed the profound act of appreciation each and every day. Hope you like it!
“Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” – Voltaire.
Appreciation changes the mind of pure observation and adds a most important ingredient: gratitude.
Appreciation shifts the perspective of an experience from simple observance (which is often turned into judgmental observance because of the ego) to blessed observance (which is appreciating the fullness of an experience through the lens of gratefulness regardless of if the experience is good, bad, or ugly).
Blessed observance fully counteracts judgmental observance because it makes light of everything, not just the good.
And making light does not imply all attached emotions to the good, bad, and ugly aren’t there (in fact they are seen even greater). It means those emotions are lit up, illuminated by the light of appreciation for them.
You can appreciate something without giving it a pass. You can appreciate a bad or ugly experience without saying it’s okay.
It can very much not be okay, and action or speech must be taken to call out wrongdoing or injustice.
But even in those situations we are observing from fullness of appreciation and not partially from judgement.
So then, with the confidence and knowledge that appreciation is not just “good” for us, but rather essential, how do we find a way to express authentic appreciation each day?
This is where mindfulness comes in! During the daily practice of meditation, we open our hearts and minds to all that surrounds us, again, not tainted by any judgement of those surroundings.
If what we see, hear, and feel brings us down; then we can appreciate the light at the end of the tunnel they show us, and make steps to change our immediate environment.
One way during my meditation that I am able to hone in on appreciation is asking a simple question, “What are you blessed with?”
Then I name ten things on each finger that I am presently appreciative for in my life.
1. Family, who love and care for me deeply.
2. Friends, who enjoy my company.
3. A roof over my head.
4. Food in my belly.
5. Clean water to drink.
6. Clothes that keep me warm.
7. The profound practice of meditation.
8. A healthy body to run around in.
9. The gorgeous state of Utah I get to run around in.
10. A great car that gets me anywhere I want.
Appreciation for the littlest of things to the largest of moments. From the very breath I am taking right now to my beloved sister Amanda who passed away when I was eighteen.
Three More Things:
1. Read – How to be more apprecaitive every day.
2. Listen – Appreciating what we already have.
3. Watch – Want to be happy? Be grateful.
April 23, 2026
Humans
It’s been a while since I posted & I feel now an obligation not to justify the time away, but in the famous words of Phil McKnight, just do it – that is, write more posts at a higher frequency.
In the time away, however, I have dived into books as a way of learning from great writers, which if I am disciplined and graced with prose, can become by the end of my tiny life.
This post was written at work, while pondering the growing divide between each other in the advent of growing reasons not to need each other – this is frankly frightening & should create urgency in our society. Anyway, hope y’all like it.
We need more humans to be there for each other than ever before.
On the massive wave of the AI Revolution, I believe we humans will increasingly be searching for other humans to lean on, trust in, spend time with, & just be there for one another.
But equally, there are more & more reasons to stay indoors, play video games, watch netflix, ignore our neighbors, stick to our screens, & reinforce our social anxiety by doing so.
This should be very, very alarming for obvious reasons (without social connection & face-to-face interactions, we devolve as a species) & unobvious reasons (our connection to our devices becomes our preferred choice of interaction).
As we begin to put more & more trust into AI models, we put more & more trust in the AI companies behind them – marking a 2.7 trillion dollar combined valuation. This is creating an unprecedented amount of wealth for a very small group of technocrats.
People are treating their AI voice models like real people, confiding very sensitive information to these very few companies, whose privacy policies are primed for ad effectiveness not personal anonymity.
Originality is at the core of combating this trend and can be the future if we are adamant. People for thousands of years have used their ingenuity, creativity, & experience to write, create, talk, play, & produce original ideas – & still do!
Like this very blog post, which I am writing entirely on my own. Like I do every single blog post. This is not to taute my own originality, it is to stand by my own belief that I have plenty to say without the need for AI to expand my thoughts.
This is not to say that I don’t use spell-check or grammar-check in my posts, just that I steer clear of AI when it comes specifically to creative writing or asking for ideas.
The greatest books of all time, for instance, were written before this life-changing invention because we humans are pretty damn creative:
George Orwell’s 1984
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
Homer’s Iliad & The Odyssey
Paulo Ochelo’s The Alchemist
C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, Witch, & the Wardrobe
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Shakespere’s Romeo & Juliet
Frank Herbert’s Dune
Tolkein’s Lord of Rings
Emily Diceknson’s Poems
J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter
…just to name a handful
What makes these books so relatable is that they are written by real humans with real pasts, real problems, & real imaginations – & it’s a real problem when books are written by AI.
Characters are manifestations of an author’s friends, family, mentors, enemies, & colleagues. Books are filled with these incredible manifestations, sometimes consuming the author whilst creating them. Frank Herbert’s own son once told an interviewer that Paul Atredies was more of a son to his father than he was.
AI can and never will be able to create these kinds of characters because it has no real past of its own, filled with emotions tied to experiences. It’s like the hive mind humans in Pluribus that combine all neurological activity like knowledge & reasoning into one shared mind, but lack individuality & independent thought.
Will AI be able to create complicated, artificial memories in the future, sure, but will it have good & bad, right & wrong, past experiences to link those memories to, no. Because it cannot attach what it does not have to memory: emotions.
In a great interview with Michael Polen, he describes the biggest difference between us & AI being how we think vs how an AI bot thinks. That a single neuron in the human brain is equal to thousands of lines of code in an AI script.
We are the single most complex (emotionally & physically) creatures we have yet to discover in the universe. That complexity is something to take note of & something that enabled the greatest minds to develop AI in the first place.
As we learn how to adapt to AI, like we did with automobiles, office jobs, the internet, social media, & every technological shift in the last twenty years; we must not lose our humanity.
The simple yet most important quality to being human is our ability to talk, face to face with each other. If we lose this, we lose what it means to be human – & sadly, our youth is losing this profound ability every day.
I encourage you to step outside your comfort zone: talk to a stranger in the street, call a friend, plan a family gathering, or attend a social event.
You don’t have to be a massive extrovert to do this, it may take more effort, but it is so worth it! Afterall, it is through real connection with each other that makes us the most human!
Thank you so much for reading. I’m on this journey with Mindfulness & to ultimately become a better writer each day (and to put excuses why not to write behind the dream of reading a new book a month & publishing a book of my own by the end of the year).
Three More Things
April 12, 2026
Earth
It may not be “Earth Day” but to me, every day is a day to celebrate the Earth.
I found these powerful words etched on a plank of wood at the entrance to a hike in Roxborough State Park right outside Denver proper.
Take care of the land. Someday you’ll be a part of it.
I needn’t write it down as the message resonated enough to remember till this day. It is a simple message: treat mother nature as you would your own mother.
And just like the billions of mothers around the globe, mother nature gives and gives and gives without asking for anything in return.
And yes, we should give a damn about this world simply because we are a part of it. When we mistreat or more accurately turn a blind eye to the Earth and we mistreat ourselves.
This is a posture of waste vs frugality. Developed countries have taken so much waste and undeveloped countries are subjected to a life of frugality.
Use what you have, finish the food on your plate, fix the thing that is broken, and shop at the local thrift store; this is how I grew up.
As we began to tread the trail, we noticed signs of all kinds of plants along the way, a subtle nod to the diversity of the area.
This diversity reminded me of the difference in all life; from humans to bacteria to types of cells in our bodies to parts of our brains.
All life is connected, made of the same matter, and all working in sync, except for us. Well, most of the time at least.
If we are the only creatures on this planet to question our own existence, then we will question our purpose, but on a very basic level, we all have a fundamental purpose: to serve each other, the environment, and take care of ourselves.
On a very basic level, our animated flesh and bones are made of mostly carbon, the building block of all life. As with all things on Earth, from dust we came and to dust we shall return.
This stresses the importance of synchronicity with Mother Earth, its rise and fall to the sun, its reaction to the changing of seasons, its slow, steady hum that connects every living thing.
And the only way to observe, learn, and absorb this synchronicity is to immerse ourselves in nature: camping under a canopy of trees, bathing in the sounds of nature, swimming in the ocean, diving deep under the waves, stargazing in the desert, barefoot on the sand.
Take a moment today and tonight to appreciate nature and all the life it provides, jot down a few words about this powerful force.
Three More Things:
February 27, 2026