If you have a dog, or a cat, or any animal, sit down with it, get a pen and paper, write a word on it, and seriously spend the next 30 minutes trying to get your dog to understand how amazing it would be if it could just look at the paper and actually read the word. ACTUALLY try to teach your dog or your cat to read the word on the paper. Not like a joke, but actually try it. Feel the frustration that your dog just won't fucking get it. But keep trying anyways in the hopes that it will get it! After 30 minutes of trying, you'll realize how amazing it is that you yourself can do it But then you'll have compassion towards your dog that it can't do it, you'll understand that that's how your dog is. But you'll also feel how amazing it is that you yourself can do it.   You might ask me why the heck you would do that. I don't know how to answer that question. But I guess that it will just show you how fucking amazing it is that you can do something so sophisticated as looking at a paper with ink on it and somehow read what the shapes on the paper mean. That's not an ability to take for granted