Lessons in Gratitude Day 97

I saw a post on my friend’s Facebook page in which he simply stated, “I am happy to be alive.” It really resonated with me as expressing pretty simple, basic, foundational gratitude. Tonight I am grateful for the path I’m on and the determination I’ve had to walk it with as much equanimity as I can muster. I was telling someone the other day that while I wouldn’t have chosen to have all the rugs pulled out from under me at once, that I didn’t plan for some the losses I experienced all at the same time, I now believe it needed to happen the way it did.

I think sometimes we get comfortable with life, even when it’s essentially an uncomfortable life. Something has to come along and shake things up in order to wake us up. Sometimes we hang tough in a difficult situation when we should cut our losses and let go. A few years ago I made a decision and took a job that I knew was a mistake–in fact, I had originally declined it, but allowed myself to get talked into it. I bowed to external pressures and said yes to it. And like a good soldier, I worked hard and did my best and played by the rules. None of that mattered in the end and through a series of unfortunate events I got laid off. In the months since that happened I’ve had a lot of time to recover, not so much from having been laid off, though that was an extremely traumatic time, but from the job itself. It had lived up (or down, depending on how you look at it) to everything I had known it would be when I first agreed to take it. If I hadn’t been laid off, I would quite likely still be languishing in a environment in which my work was undervalued and low priority.

There’s a story I heard that seems to fit this notion. Two old men and an old hound dog were sitting out on the porch on a hot afternoon. Every once in a while the hound dog would lift his head up from where he was laying and howl, then put his head back down. After he’d done this quite a few times the one old man asked the other one, “what’s the matter with your old hound dog?” The old man answered, “Oh, he’s lying on a nail. It hurts, but hasn’t bothered him enough to make him get up and move.”

I wonder how many nails I’ve allowed myself to lie on over the past several years. How many things have I lived with that have been irritating to downright painful, but not painful enough for me to make changes I need to make in my life? The things that have ended for me since the beginning of the year we perhaps like nails I was laying on and I needed to make changes in my life. I think I probably howled a lot over the past few years but I didn’t have the energy or the strength or courage or whatever it was I needed to make the changes I need to make. So the Universe made them for me, and though it’s been hard, I am grateful.

I still don’t know at times where this is all headed, but I do believe that I am headed in the right direction. And while I’m still looking for some signposts to guide me along the way, I’m not standing still just because I’m not sure exactly where I’m headed. I’m going to keep walking and trust the Universe will let me know when I need to make the next turn.