I am grateful to the readers of this blog who from time to time reveal themselves by offering comments and feedback. It is so good to have you along for the journey, and when you express your thoughts in a word or two it connects me with you and reconnects me with why I write each day. Partly for me and partly for the readers, I sit each evening and ponder over the blessings of the day or those foundational blessings for which I am grateful for no matter what else the day has brought. Some days I am inspired by a particular thing, while others finds my inspiration dried up and my wisdom non-apparent, leaving me with a blank screen and that damned blinking cursor. Through it all people read and manage to find value in these writings, even when I have struggled mightily to write something coherent. Thank you.
Today has been a good day. No particular reason for this other than a shift. If I track back through the weeks I’d probably notice a pattern of lower energy on the weekends than during the week. I sometimes wonder why I don’t notice these things sooner, or if I have noticed (and possibly blogged about it), why I forget the important pattern I noticed in the first place. I remember discovering “Tuesday bluesday” and “blue Friday.” Now I am starting to think about blues weekends and what it is about Saturdays and Sundays lately that sees me struggling. I don’t have it fully sorted, but I’m pretty sure blues weekends started before 2011. Part of it had to do with working in a fairly toxic environment at a stressful job. The weekends became my time to collapse–to take off the armor I’d worn all week and crash on the sofa, veg on football, catch up on TV, etc. My body remembers this pattern and now replays it for me. Over the past couple of months, particularly when football season started up, I plop myself onto the sofa in front of the TV on Saturdays and Sundays and watch football, sometimes all day. Not healthy. So having uncovered this semi-conscious pattern, I now can develop strategies for counteracting it. This is a very good thing.
I am grateful to be learning tools that help with the counteracting I need to do these days. Tonight I learned more about the practice of compassion as taught through a Buddhist lens by a wonderful teacher at East Bay Meditation Center. Compassion toward ourselves and others is such an important gift to ourselves and to the world. Like lovingkindness, it’s important to begin by offering compassion to ourselves; our capacity to offer compassion to others is seriously limited if we cannot also offer it to ourselves. I have had a lot of opportunity to offer compassion to myself as well as to others around me. It is an important spiritual muscle to exercise regularly and strengthen. Like gratitude it is an attribute to be cultivated and tended to constantly so that it can grow. Can you imagine a world in which compassion was the predominant expression toward all living things? Wow, what would that be like?
What if, instead of criticizing ourselves for our mistakes or shortcomings or failures, we looked upon ourselves as we might regard a beloved child or friend, and offer love and kindness and forgiveness; in other words, compassion? How about offering ourselves words of comfort and soothing whenever we are lonely, sad, disappointed or any other of the myriad emotions that wash over us over the course of a day, week, month? And then as we view the people around us, what if we offered compassion instead of irritation when a person gets our order wrong or cuts us off in traffic or inadvertently insults or snubs us in some way? What would the ripple effect be if for one day we committed to practicing compassion toward every living thing in every situation over the course of a single day? We could change the world, beginning in that moment.
I’m going to try it. When I wake tomorrow morning and am cranky about being awakened by the neighbor with the noisy muffler or overwhelmed with worries about making ends meet this month or confronted with any number of fears, sorrows, or other emotions, I’m going to approach each situation with compassion. I imagine that I’ll have plenty of opportunities to practice! As usual, I’ll report back in this blog. Until then, may we all be free from pain and suffering and may we all know happiness and peace. And so it is.
One Response to Lessons in Gratitude Day 159