Tonight I got home from work at around 11:00 p.m. It’s now nearly 11:30 and I am whipped. And a full day is on my schedule for tomorrow. Alas. But there is still a little time to offer simple gratitude before the clock strikes midnight and we are at tomorrow.
First, I am grateful as always for traveling mercies. Sometimes the 26.4 mile drive home can feel much longer. Tonight as I left the building after the event at work, I stepped into a thick fog–where had that come from? In spite of the fog, the Beltway traffic was light and I made it home in 31 minutes–very nearly a record for me. It was quiet and easy, fog notwithstanding and I am grateful for the uneventful drive home.
I am also grateful to my sister Ruth (for whom I am eternally grateful and have written about a lot in this blog) for being kind enough to come over to my house and take Honor out for a much-needed walk about the yard to relieve herself. It’s a great comfort to me that her Auntie Ruth will come over and see to her needs or that she can go for sleepovers at Auntie Sandy’s house when I go away for a few days.
I am grateful for something relatively small that I accomplished today. I won’t say much about it except to note that I could have given in any number of times, but I stuck with what I was doing, in spite of discomfort and inconvenience and I’m proud of myself for sticking it out. You know there are those accomplishments that we achieve when no one is watching, when no one even knows you’re striving for something. These are things you don’t do for a pat on the back, but solely for the satisfaction that you took on a challenge and met it without fanfare or standing ovations. I’m grateful for sticking with my objective, seeing it through to the end. It’s a good feeling.
I am aware of the many blessings I have, the privileges afforded to me, some earned, but many unearned. I enjoy freedom of movement through the country. As a citizen I am afforded certain rights and privileges not enjoyed by so many people across the country and around the world. I live in what by US middle class standards might be considered relatively modest, but am actually quite wealthy by some standards outside the US and even some places here. I am educated and have access to many, many things. I am relatively able-bodied and for most of my life have enjoyed good health and physical and mental strength. I have a warm, safe, and comfortable little house and very nearly always have sufficient (and even more than sufficient) food to eat. These are not minor things and I have learned to not take them too much for granted. I have experienced moments of hunger when some experience days of it.
It’s difficult to express these sentiments without sounding shallow and self-congratulatory; but I am genuinely grateful for all that I’ve been blessed with as well as these things I’ve accomplished or earned. I am grateful for my many blessings–great and small and for those simple ones I’ve shared this in this blog on this late night, I am most exceedingly grateful.
