What a wild ride today on the mechanical bull that is my life. Must it follow that when I’ve had a good retreat day for some reason the next day is a blues day? I have to examine this pattern more closely to see if I can ferret out the answer. Or perhaps it is simply another wild, unpredictable swing on the bull. Today was a bit of a struggle. Sometimes writing on gratitude can be a real challenge…but then, that’s kind of the point. I started writing this blog in part as a way to keep myself positive in the midst of trying circumstances. So on days when things aren’t going so well or I am not feeling as upbeat or positive as I would like, having to write this blog gives me an opportunity to dig deep to find something I can write about. I am grateful for having to do such excavations; I feel an obligation, a sense of accountability to myself and to those faithful folks who read this blog on a regular basis. Without that accountability I could potentially drop into a funk that could go on for days.That would set my whole “reinvention” process back. So I am grateful this evening for being accountable to someone(s) other than myself. I don’t yet have a huge followership of this blog; but my guess is that if I missed a single day, and certainly if I missed two in a row, I would hear about it from somebody. That creates just enough pressure (the good kind) that nudges me out of whatever space I’m in and into a position of writing something, even if it’s just a paragraph or two of simple gratitude. Thanks to everyone who tunes in, even if only once in a while.
Tonight I am grateful for my daughter and the deep connection we share. I picked her up from the airport last night after her Thanksgiving visit with her Dad. Today she was so affected by my low-energy funk that she decided to drive home this evening rather than spend another night with a cranky person. I couldn’t really blame her, and was sad to watch her pack up and head out the door. Less than 10 minutes later she was back. She had decided not to leave after all. As I write this I am in a much better space and I hope she is glad that she stayed. Tomorrow morning we’ll get up and have breakfast together before I put her on the road back up to school for the last three weeks of the semester.
I am grateful for this wild ride. While I at times dream longingly of a more tranquil life, for right now that is not in the cards for me. So I continue to walk this uncertain and unpredictable path, developing patience, perseverance, and persistance, all the while holding myself with compassion and kindness, remembering to be thankful through it all. I remind myself once again of the words by Ranier Maria Rilke,
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
I am learning to love and live the questions until the day when I can live the answers.
© M. T. Chamblee, 2011
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