Too little, too late?

A little over a decade ago, when Niyoshi was born and I had no support system around in Mumbai, my mum came to my rescue. She left Chennai, her husband (my dad), all her other kids and grandkids behind so that she could take care of my newborn while I pursued my career. Sun TV and my daughter were her world. I was busy working; she had no other relatives here and she had language barrier. These things didn’t unsettle her in a bit. She was kind, patient and more than anything happy to be babysitting her youngest granddaughter. All the 5 years that she was here I never remember thanking her for giving her time and love exclusively to my daughter and me. After she was gone (not from Mumbai but also from our lives), I spent many nights silently crying for not having told her how proud and grateful I was to have her as my mother.

In life, often we take things and people for granted. We take our parents, our friends, our guardian angels, our spouses, children, education, opportunities etc. for granted. We don’t look at them as our blessings but take it as our rights. We seldom stop to count our blessings and imagine life without them. We run so fast that we never appreciate the present. We value our teachers much after we passed out of school, we are kinder to our kids when its time for them to leave home, we think of our parents a lot more after they are no more and we want to cling on to loved ones only after we feel threatened about the relationship.

I wonder why is that we don’t cherish the things while they still belong? Why is that paranoia the driver most of the time? Is this the basic animal instinct? If so, when would the part of brain that controls this, evolve?