Do you know someone that loves to write or be active but doesn’t spend much time doing it – somebody that says that they would if they “had the time”? According to an OECD study, only 20% of all time is considered “free”, and we spend more than half of it on television or radio. Consider how much of the remaining 8.5% is spent on our phones. Many of us and those we love experience hardship and unhappiness, and these sorts of things distract us from living our lives the way that we wish. Annie Dillard once said, “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” EWI exists to cultivate passion for the human experience, to help others find as much value as possible in as many moments as possible.

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While there is a correlation between time valued and time spent on passions, much of our time must be spent doing other things. We all must spend time in traffic, in the doctor’s office, or at a minimum in the restroom. We may not be passionate about these things, but we can find value in them. By practicing gratitude, we can find value in the surrounding world while stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. We have moments to sit in peaceful silence, listen to music, admire the clouds, or call loved ones. Even the restroom provides us with moments to ourselves, chances to practice enjoying the mundane. The most mundane experiences are still interesting - occurring in the lives of humans, an environment-altering apex species with free will on the planet Earth, a rock that floats around a ball of fire in the sky. We can find value in that. When we’re having a hard time doing it, we can grow. 

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We often forget about gratitude when we're distracted by fear and anxiety. The animalistic part of our brains registers danger quickly, traditionally to help us survive, which is why news articles are seldom positive. Biologically, it makes sense that we focus on the negativity in our lives. Anxiety tells us to walk in groups at night and to look both ways before crossing the street, but it can also keep us in a loop of stagnation. We want to grow so we try and change, and then our brains register the change as danger, encouraging us to stick to what we know is safe. We break the cycle by existing with initiative.