Gratitude

Gratitude

“The quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness”.

For years I used to write everyday throughout November, listing things in life I was grateful for.  It started one year when I was living in a dark hole struggling to see light and recognize good things around me and about me and my life. I started small. “I am thankful that the sun is out and shining today”. At the time I wasn’t grateful for it, I just needed something to write a sentence about that wasn’t negative…and the sun shining was a deep reach at the time.

It was hard for me to contrast good with the feelings I was living in. Nothing felt good, it felt hopeless and dark, nothing seemed to carry much weight so the sun shining didn’t make me feel any warmer inside, it was just a string of words I put to paper for the “credit” of keeping track. It became a daily practice for me, writing in a little book, a single sentence about something…anything “the line was short at the grocery store”, “I hit a green light on my way home”, “I finished a page in a book I was reading” I could reach only so far and it was toward the mundane. There was definitely a gap, a canyon wide between writing a sentence of gratefulness and feeling any kind of gratefulness. I did this for years, one day and a time…it was painstaking and felt meaningless and agonizing like a math assignment I just couldn’t get my head around in high school, keeping me up until 11pm wailing about how I just couldn’t get it done.

Over time coming up with something got a bit easier “my dog was happy to see me when I got home from work”, “a kiddo I worked with said my name!”, “The sunset was gorgeous!”, “my roses smell delightful” and I felt a smile touch my lips as I finished my sentence. Adjectives started to color my phrases along with color, texture, touch, smell. People and their actions started to paint my day and when I wasn’t looking the slightest taste of joy started to spark inside my heart. I felt lighter and my days started taking on a new shape, I started to look for joy in the small menial daily annoyances that used to chide me. My heart grew lighter and I started to unburden myself of the weight of carrying around so much negativity. It wasn’t overnight nor was it really on purpose, but the action of stating something every day changed me over time.

The challenge grew from a little journal to my Facebook page, merging from a life of solitude and pain, to an attempt to open up to others and share my attempt to find joy and craft my grateful one liners into something bigger…maybe a short paragraph and of course a photo (mostly of my dog, let’s be real he’s the best thing ever!). The month of November is focused on thanksgiving and felt like a good starting place to increase my challenge for myself with the days leading up to Thanksgiving Day. Then it grew some more, into a real reflection and to more abstract ideas and things I find I am grateful for in this life, to really exploring struggles within myself and the process for overcoming those barriers. I shared on that platform for years, expanding my challenge to the whole month of November and I wasn’t allowed to “check it off” with something mundane, I had to work for it. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Forced myself to a schedule of inner reflection with no plan for what I was writing, just allowing a subject or thought to unfold on its own. I was wracked with stress some days, wondering what the heck I would come up with and it was always just there…a lot of the time it wasn’t really for me, but someone else would read it and find a jive. That was the real grateful I felt, connecting with someone else just as a human searching for something joyful expressed.

Since starting my blog I have completely fallen off of any gratitude journaling or marking those moments with an exercise and I have noticed that this year in particular, I have had a harder time with reminders that life is good. I still see joy in a day and in the mundane…but I don’t really search for it or make a practice of finding it every day…and I really haven’t challenged myself with writing. It’s gotten the brush off in the midst of other life activities and I miss the practice.  

Gratitude is a quality. A standard of excellence or distinctive attribute possessed by someone. I used to hone the quality of gratitude in my life on a daily basis. I wish I was in a place where I was ready for another challenge, a daily challenge to write so deeply in self-reflection and act out gratitude without necessarily feeling gratitude, but mostly I just feel tired. Digging deep is work, it used to come more easily than it does these days. My boss is always talking about work/life balance with schedules and I thought I had a decent balance with work taking up so many hours and life being free on the flip side, but maybe I am just realizing that life balance is on another scale without the contrast of work. Balance for activities, reflection, solitude, adventure, chores, errands, the mundane and then just being. Maybe the challenge I need to accept this go round of November is simply a space to just be for 5 minutes to collect my thoughts that circle wider than a run through of the day, the check lists, and the leftovers and tomorrows outlook. I lost that somewhere. If gratitude is a quality, the practice is what the rest is measured by, my quality of life feels lacking, and perhaps it is due to the loss of practicing gratitude.

I was hoping that somewhere in the keystrokes another part would take over and write the answers for me leading me to the metaphorical pot of gold and the energy I needed to accept the November challenge from the past, but instead I find that I don’t want the pressure of the past haunting me all month making me feel failure in an attempt I haven’t agreed to, nor do I feel like I want to do that again. Throughout the years that I have chosen to find gratitude and express it in my life, it has never turned its back on me. I have never lost its trail when I have gone looking for it and even here, putting pressure on myself to make it act a certain way and deliver me to some alternate universe, it lays it’s cards the same. Here in these keystrokes I have found deep gratitude for gratitude itself. Its nature remains in its integrity and a tiny smile is pulling at my lips while deeper down there is a tickle of joy holding hands with contentment.