It has been another interesting day. I divided most of my time today between three major endeavors. First, I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things. We were out of some essentials, so essentials I went and got. Unfortunately when I had gotten to the store I realized I’d forgotten my list. So when I returned home I realized that there were a number of essentials that I’d forgotten to pick up. This will necessitate another trip to the store, which I will manage later in the week. Grocery shopping on a tight budget is an interesting exercise in creativity. I am grateful for various experiences that have taught me to be resourceful and creative in my approaches to living within limits.
The second thing I did was spend a number of hours poring over position descriptions for jobs I might be interested in pursuing. Out of nearly a dozen positions, only about a quarter of them align relatively well with my background and experience. In addition to reviewing the position descriptions, I spent quite a while studying the institutions and departments where the positions are housed. In a number of cases I had serious concerns about the institutions, about elements of the job, and in some cases about the geographic location of some of the schools. I continue to be pulled between two competing thoughts: (1) a job is a job and you need income so go after and take whatever you can get, and (2) you studied hard, worked hard to achieve a certain level of performance, and you have considerable experience. So you can’t take a job that doesn’t take advantage of your skills or pay you even close to what you’re worth. Such are the challenges of being jobless and over 50. There’s a lesson in gratitude in here somewhere, I just know it….
The third thing I spent more time on than I “should” have was in email conversations with two cousins, neither of whom I’ve met in person or even spoken to over the phone. The three of us are joined in a quest to unravel the mysteries of our family history. Two of us are African American and the other one is white. I have a second white cousin who is also working on helping us discover more about the African American (slave) side of the family. It’s been rather fascinating and much more interesting than dwelling on my present day challenges.
For most of my life I have been interested in my family heritage. Part of that interest came from listening to my grandfather tell me stories about his life and that of my father and his brothers. I pestered grandpa for years to tell me our family story, long before Alex Haley popularized the search for his family in “Roots.” The recent popularity of websites like ancestry.com and the associated television program “Who Do You Think You Are” have heightened the interests of thousands (tens of thousands?) of Americans in knowing who their ancestors are. Of course, for many African Americans our trails often dead end on some plantation “down south” somewhere. I know with relative certainty that at least one line on my father’s side of the family emerged from a plantation in Anderson, South Carolina. My grandfather’s grandmother was a slave who migrated (was sold) from South Carolina to Hall County, Georgia. My father’s family settled in and around Atlanta, Georgia, where my father was born. I love a good story, and this is one I’m anxious to tell. I am grateful for all that I am learning about who I am, about who came before me, about the kind of “stuff” I’m made of.
Yep, today has been another one of those days. This evening I had a difficult conversation with my daughter that left both of us feeling somewhat strained. The circumstances of our lives aren’t easy right now, and that’s enough to strain the best relationships. At the heart of it all, however, is a very strong, deep, abiding love that we have for one another. That love is unflappable and stands firm and unmovable when the storms and winds of life howl all around us. This too will pass.
Practicing gratitude is easy when life is easy; finding things to be grateful for in the midst of hard times is a challenge. But it is like exercising with weights: it’s a strain when you first start lifting weights. You can barely lift those 10 pound dumbbells much less do multiple biceps curls with them. But after a while the 10 pounders get to be too easy and you can do multiple reps without breaking a sweat. So you move up to 15 or 20 pound weights and strain to lift those until they get too easy, and so forth. Right now I am hefting some serious gratitude weights. I hope to have equally serious gratitude muscles when all is said and done.
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