It’s been another good, long, tiring day. My eyes are watering and tired as I squint at the computer screen tonight. I woke this morning too early as usual. I sleep too lightly or something, and so all kinds of noises find their way into my sleep time. It used to be the morning sun blazing through my window that woke me. My room faces full on east and so I catch the morning sun. I took to wearing eye shades, which look a bit ridiculous, I suppose and somehow an image of Lucille Ball in “I Love Lucy” comes to mind. I think she wore those shades to bed. So I have the morning sunlight figured out, and as fall approaches it will be less of a problem.
So there’s the issue of the sounds. It used to be mainly the birds. The birds out in this area don’t tweet or sing sweetly–they shriek, squawk, and whistle (there’s some sort of hawk or other raptor out here), generally starting around 5 a.m. They too will be less of an issue when fall arrive. Then there’s the neighbor who leaves for work every morning somewhere between 6:30 and 7, pulling his rolling briefcase behind him, the wheels on the pavement of the parking lot heralding his departure. He climbs into his car with the faulty muffler and grumbles out of the parking lot, followed a half hour later by his wife. I recognize the beep-beep of her alarm as she unlocks her car and now know the sound of her engine when it starts. The noise reduction options are to either close my window–not good for the occasional warm evening out here in the Bay area–or to wear earplugs, which I simply can’t bring myself to do (yet.)
So I don’t sleep so well and find myself longing for the days when I lived in a single family dwelling. But you know what? Every night I sleep with a roof over my head, with blankets warming me or a fan cooling me. My home is safe; I can sleep relatively assured that no one is going to harm me. And when the winter comes I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to keep dry and warm.
Most of the things that I complain about could easily be turned around and viewed from a perspective of gratitude. It doesn’t even take a lot of effort to change the perspective. I complain about traffic, but a grateful to have the freedom that comes with having a car to get myself from place to place. What if I were simply grateful for rush hour traffic? I do a lot of driving now that I’ve moved 12 miles from where I used to live and am temporarily driving my son to and from his job. I have some really great audiobooks that I’ve been enjoying. Sometimes it’s a bummer to have to get out of the car because that’s mostly where I listen to them. With a little effort we can make many situations tolerable and occasionally even pleasant.
I think that over the next few days I’m really going to pay attention to the times I start to complain about something and see if there’s not some hidden gratitude opportunity in there somewhere. Complaining serves no useful purpose that I can think of, it merely creates an unnecessarily negative cloud of gloom around the complainer. Gratitude, on the other hands brings with it good energy, good will, good intention. I’m not sure how many times I’ll be able to catch myself mid-complaint, but it’s certainly worth a try. I can’t help but believe that it will begin to yield positive benefits right away. When it does, you can count on me sharing it in this blog.
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