The phrase “take for granted” originated over 400 years ago. No wonder we take the words themselves for granted.

We assume, we imagine.

No sweat.

The need to paint the house without getting a new ladder needn’t concern us; our punctual friend will arrive on time, and Social Security is guaranteed. Whatever we ignore, suppose, and believe will be OK.

What do we anticipate and count on, and what is the cost of such assumptions and suppositions?

• We start, if we are lucky, believing our parents will always be there for us, forever protecting us. Without trusting these anticipations, we might try to crawl back into the womb.
• Age. We don’t think of ourselves as akin to browning bananas or pills with a use-by date. We peer at the oldsters, unrecognizable as people who were once young, not as versions of our future selves. This provides us with much-needed reassurance.
• Time. At our beginnings, time does not exist. Soon, it crawls forward unobserved, inching its way. The jet plane carrying faster clocks travels far away, for now.
• Childhood is expected to last. Why not? We learn, we grow; the final day of school brings endless summer vacation—the most joyous moment of the year, homework disappears, and our friends wait to play with us. Making a living is beyond real understanding … for a while.
• We love our parents and relatives, and they reciprocate the affection in perpetuity. We do not understand how love is altered by the madness of sexual attraction, a different creature entirely.
• Taking one’s talent or pleasing appearance as automatic and permanent benefits us as we pursue life with confidence. Succeeding in our studies or on the playing field primes us for greater self-assurance and accomplishment.
• Later, as young men, we achieve the status of the immortal Greek gods, or so some of us believe. Like Superman, invulnerability is assured. No Kryptonite needed, thank you.
• Young fellows and not a few women serve in the armed forces, determined to protect the rest of the population. But not all come back, and not all come back whole. Life and one’s perception are changed. Less is taken for granted.

• Elected officials decide to send the best and bravest off to hellscapes, numbers or chess pieces in a terrible game, sometimes for no clear reason. Do those who are standing by, inert, assume someone—anyone—watches over the others, or end wrong-headed wars? We turn away, too often. Presuming …. The civilian’s role is reduced to applauding those who return. Assuming ….
• Some of us imagine we will wed, if inclined. Opportunity is assumed until it is not. Desperation enters the room, unless the single life is superior, also presumed.
• What will come will come—and we’ll meet it when it does—one of the laws of midlife.
• Full career dedication risks the assurance that the spouse will provide complete care, that the kids are fine, and that the partner won’t be lonely and overworked. Regret hides in the bushes.
• A patient in a psychiatric hospital once told me, “assuming makes ass(es of) u (and) me.” He went on to become a brave man. In fact, a Marine.
• He wouldn’t do that. The line spoken by partners in business and marriage before the unpredicted betrayal.
• Hiding. Escape and avoidance as preferred life strategies. It is the mistaken idea that retreat and self-protection are best, making a life in a cave.
• Jump. Awareness is startling. One day you are old. Getting old can be handled; becoming older and older less so. Work hard to preserve your body, unless you compare yourself to others who didn’t have to. Why not me, you say? Roll the assumption dice and hope.

How much taking things for granted is too much? I can only say that we need sizeable quantities, but we ought to evaluate our own slice from time to time.

To paraphrase an old pre-television radio program, how substantial a portion of for-grantedness should be consumed?

“The Shadow knows.”

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The top painting is Taking a Walk on the Cliffs of Sainte-Adresse by Claude Monet, 1867. Beneath it is Monet’s View Taken from Greinval, 1881. Both were sourced from Wikiart.org.