I am grateful this evening for simple things. It was another beautiful day here in the Bay area. You would think after living here for six years I would be accustomed to sunny, 60 degree weather in December, but it still boggles my mind at times. While the weather holds, I am still able to walk the Park in relative comfort, for which I am exceedingly grateful. When the January and February rains hit I’m a lot less likely to be able to walk outside. So I’ll happily accept these days. Today I took Honor with me–it creates a different event when I take her with me, but I’m always glad when I do. She lives in a very small world most of the time–my small bedroom, our small back yard, etc. It’s nice to be able to bring her to the Park and let her off leash so she can wander around in relative freedom for a little while. As I think about it now, I am grateful that I began coming to the Park a few days a week. It occurs to me that at times I live in a pretty small world myself. I sit at my desk in my small bedroom looking at the computer screen–reading emails, searching the internet, writing, spending time on Facebook. It’s good for me to get up and out and into open spaces.
I am thankful to have made it through another week. Gratitude helped me get through this week. At times when there has been relatively little to cheer about, I continue to exercise my thanks-giving muscles, working to find the positives in situations that feel anything but. Every once in a while I have to work really hard–it would be so much easier to just give in and let myself feel bad for a little while. There have been a few times this week when I would have liked to sit down in my troubles and splash around in them a bit, having a really big time pity party. But, pity parties are really counter-productive, and in the end, you still have to pick yourself up and get back into the flow of life. So I am sticking with gratitude and many of the other life-affirming practices I’ve been taking on over these months.
Over the next few weeks, between now and the end of the year, I’m going to be exercising my spiritual muscles. I would like to dance out of 2011 with some upbeat energy and emerge into 2012 with a renewed sense of faith. I need to pose and answer some questions to myself and get myself into a reflective frame of mind. What do I need to let go of as this year ends, and what do I want to come into my life? If I’ve been grasping, clinging, holding onto things that I need to let go of, then opening my hands to release them also leaves them empty and ready to receive what’s next for me. It’s a time for making space, or perhaps creating spaciousness, and to begin to attract more of what I want to have present in my life. I still have a long way to go and much to learn. One of the muscles I’ve been exercising is patience; so I am learning to be alright when my progress in so many areas seems painfully slow.
I’m grateful to all of us who are on this journey together. Those of you who read this blog are not passively doing so. By engaging with these ideas on a regular basis you too are flexing your muscles of gratitude and other virtues as you ride along with me on my mechanical bull life. May my writing on gratitude today and the days preceding it be of benefit to everyone who reads and ponders the messages in these blogs. So be it!
