Today started out alright, but it is not really ending as well as I’d hoped when the day began. Sometimes the struggle gets to be a little too much and I hit a wall. It’s okay really. I’ve hit it before. I don’t bounce back quite as quickly as I perhaps used to, but I bounce back. This is what I keep telling myself, anyway. Tonight I am grateful that I was able to devote my time and energy to something other than fretting about things in my life. I spent the afternoon volunteering at the Berkeley Food Pantry. It continues to be one of the best things I do during the course of a week. I will continue to give my time there for as long as I live in the greater Berkeley area.
Today I am grateful for many things. They are basic things like sufficient food to eat–I actually had breakfast, lunch, and dinner today, a warm, dry place out of the rain we’ve been having this week, and part-time employment that helps me meet some of my obligations. I have friends and family whom I dearly love and who love me. I have sufficient clothes and shoes that are in relatively good repair. I have safe, reliable transportation to get me and my son where we need to go. I have full use of my body and am relatively healthy. These are just a few of the many basic things I am fortunate to have in my life. I also have a long list of issues of concern in my life and I must confess that at times this other list gets overwhelming to the point of obscuring my simple gratitudes. I am at that place this evening. This too shall pass.
Optimism really is a miraculous thing. Is there a wellspring of hopefulness that bubbles up in the human spirit? There must be. Mine keeps showing up even when things look and feel particularly bleak. I am exceedingly grateful for this. I will shortly sign off tonight. I will go to bed and eventually I will go to sleep. When I wake in the morning it will be to face a new day perhaps with new optimism for good things to unfold over the course of the day. I will look for and find the moments of grace throughout the day that carry me and for which I will manage to find words of gratitude for when I blog at the close of day. This is how it is for now. I encourage myself using the words of Dame Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth century Christian mystic, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” So let it be.
