Tonight I find myself mentally exhausted and needing to get to sleep earlier than I have been. So, I decided to spin the RNG wheel–I have two that I spin. One is set to choose a random number between 1 and 300 and the other between 1 and 350. For the first time ever the RNG gave me the number 1. So I am going to share a portion of that very first lesson in gratitude, written on June 30, 2011, nearly two full years ago. So tonight as I repost that original piece I want to express my gratitude for having started this blog and developed a gratitude practice. It continues to transform my life by daily challenging me to see the good, the beauty, the hope in the midst of struggle, the joy in simple things, and a deep appreciation for the many, many blessings in my life.
And so here nearly two years and 700 blog posts later is an excerpt of my very first post of a lesson in gratitude:
Lately as I’ve pondered my rather uncertain fate I keep coming across the idea of gratitude and being encouraged to write lists,ranging from 10 to 100 of things for which I am grateful. At one point,this felt like a perfunctory exercise. One is encouraged to write down from the large,important things like gratitude for loved ones or material things to even the smallest things, like “I am grateful for a nice cold glass of water” or “I am grateful for my dog” or the sunshine or or or….I was frustrated by this advice, in part because I couldn’t really see the purpose in filling page after page of things that I am grateful for. I nevertheless dutifully wrote my list of ten things.
Then for some reason today it hit me: I really am grateful for so many things, including those mundane things I am privileged to think of as mundane–like clean water to drink and something that makes my clean water cold. I am facing some challenges in my life right now but those challenges are far outweighed by the number of things I am grateful for. So, I am challenging myself to write every day about at least one thing I am grateful for. Not a list of things, but one thing (or more) that I’m grateful for and why. I’m not sure how long I can sustain it, or if I’ll write a public blog every day or simply write it in my journal. But, I am challenging myself nonetheless. All those people who recommend doing this can’t be wrong. There’s simply nothing to lose by doing this.
And there really has been nothing to lose and everything in the world to gain by choosing to write about gratitude. I don’t have tons of readers, and periodically I think about how I need to “market” this blog so I get a larger readership. And, that would definitely be cool. But while this blog started out as a way for me to recognize and take note of the many things I had to be grateful about in the midst of a seriously challenging time in my life, it has become something more than that. It really became a chronicle of my journey, of the passage through the struggles and uncertainties, a testament to the power of perseverance through difficult times, all viewed through the lens of gratitude. It continues to provide a space for exploring various thoughts and themes, some serious and some humorous, written for you the readers and for me as participant/observer/chronicler.
I am grateful for where this journey has carried my thus far, and whether I write for 700 or 1000 or 10,000 days, it has been a blessing to offer the gift of gratitude to anyone who cares to read these posts. And for that blessing I am, of course, truly grateful.
