“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” according to Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu. Some days I feel like I have a thousand miles to go to get where I want to be and taking that one step at a time makes for a really long trip. I’ve been pretty tired lately, feeling like I’m burning the candle at both ends and the middle all at the same time. This is, of course, a fairly dramatic metaphor but it captures what I’m feeling at the moment. In spite of being tired, however, I am grateful. Because even when things feel hard and like I am teetering on the edge of a cliff, the truth is I am held and supported in the sweetest and most unexpected ways.
I was remarking to my daughter tonight that we are blessed, often in small ways. When I am up against deadlines and faced with situations that can at times make me feel like I’m coming unglued, some small thing will happen or fall into place or come in the mail that is just enough to solve the issue at hand. I don’t get huge windfalls (not yet, anyway), but I get what I need just about exactly when I need it. This is a wonderful and nearly miraculous thing. The old gospel song says, “He (G0d) may not come when you want him, but he’s right on time.” The sentiment is that sometimes things don’t come through when and how we want them to, but they do come through. That has been true throughout my life and is true for me now. Remembering this keeps me from panicking for the most part (I still do have my moments, of course) and moving forward as best I can every day. I am grateful for the many ways, great and small, that I am cared for every day.
I spoke via Skype with my brother the other night. When I asked him how he was doing he rubbed his hands over his tired eyes and said, “You know, I don’t have anything to complain about. I am grateful…” We talked then a bit about gratitude and he echoed the sentiment I’ve shared so often in this blog that each one of us, no matter our circumstances, can find one thing each day for which we are grateful. One thing. If I had one of those small handheld clickers that help people keep count of things and I clicked it once every time I recognized something I am grateful for in a given day, I wonder what my count would be at the end of the day. I would have to say dozens and could even hazard a guess that it could be hundreds of things. When I wake up in the morning (click that I woke up |) in a relatively comfortable bed (click for the bed | and warm blankets |), swung my feet to the floor and sat up (click for mobility of my legs, feet and body that I could sit up |||), stand and walk to the bathroom (can see to get to the bathroom | where there’s indoor plumbing |) and let’s not forget that I have a roof over my head that protects me from the elements (|) …you get the point. I wouldn’t be able to keep track of it all. So I don’t try to keep track of them all, but you’d best believe I make sure to keep track of some of them. Every day.
I wonder what it would take to create a gratitude revolution? Perhaps it is as simple as my asking everyone I meet, “What are you grateful for today?” I wonder if I would have the nerve to do that. I wonder if people would be willing to take the time to answer. I’m not yet pledging to start the gratitude revolution, or at least not to asking everyone I encounter to share with me what they are grateful for. Still, it might be an interesting experiment. I wonder how many people after a while would say, “Uh oh, here she comes again, that gratitude lady. She’s weird!” I just wonder…Perhaps I’ll start a gratitude revolution. I’ll post it on Facebook and ask my daughter to “tweet” about it. What if we all went around with clickers or notepads or something and wrote down everything we were grateful for over the course of a day and wrote down what people told us when we asked them what they were grateful for. And what if we did a snowball thing where we asked each person who we asked to ask two or three other people. It could go viral. In a world so dominated by bad news these days, imagine what a gratitude revolution could do for our collective psyches. I just might have to get this thing started. Care to join me?
