Lessons in Gratitude

Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug…I’m not saying just yet which I was today. I am grateful to be at the end of what has been, as a friend of mine calls it, a rich and full day. Even as I write this, I am sitting on my bed surrounded by reports, notes, outlines, and worksheets. My virtual desktop is likewise littered with open documents, PowerPoints, emails and PDFs. I was working on some of these at the office, but that got somewhat derailed by a variety of impromptu occurrences, all of which were important. That is the nature of being in the people business, things come up that draw our attention away from whatever other important things we were working on at the time. By the time I was able to get back to them, it was time to climb into my car for the commute home. A quick dinner and back at it. Now it is blogging time.

I have to smile that I find myself in a people business. People who’ve known me for a long time know that one of my heart’s desires is to be a farmer. People are okay; animals are great. I can remember when I was in junior high school and was being pressed by my mother to begin to zero in on my career path. I had said I wanted to be a writer, and had the skills and aptitude to pursue that vocation, but Mom convinced me that I should consider writing more of a hobby and look to finding a more marketable, employable career. I knew I didn’t want to be a doctor like my father–I didn’t want to deal with people constantly complaining about what ailed them. Eventually I decided that because I liked animals I should be a veterinarian, and I studied animal sciences through my bachelors and masters degrees. There was a reason for that choice of study: I was essentially a rather shy person and figured I was much more comfortable with dogs and cats and farm animals than I was with people.

But God has a funny sense of humor and I eventually found myself increasingly in roles in which I was helping, guiding, teaching, and in myriad ways interacting with human beings. And in spite of my initial shyness and genuine enjoyment of nonhuman animals, I discovered I was actually pretty good at it. Now having spent nearly 30 years working directly with and on behalf of different groupings of people, I am much more relaxed with it all. There are days, though, when I am peopled out and I need to reconnect with nature and with my own inner resources.

A number of years ago I made a deal with God that I would keep doing the work that I’m doing for ten more years. I’m in the last couple of years of that contract. While I’m here, I’m will continue to throw myself wholeheartedly into this particular iteration of the people business until such time as I can retire to the farm. It is a privilege of sorts to be called to work directly in service to or on behalf of people. It is particularly gratifying working in higher education and being able to see the impact your work has not only on the students you serve but on the greater world as those students go on to have significant impacts on the world around them, on the people they serve.

It has been a long day interacting with people and the occasionally messy, sometimes complicated situations that emerge where human relations are involved. My general approach is to offer a silent prayer, take a deep breath to calm my heart, and do the very best I can. Tomorrow I will step back into the space and meet whatever is there. I am grateful to have the opportunity to offer my mind, my heart, my energy, myself in service to the people I work with and the people we work for. From that perspective, it’s all good.

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday I was a bit out of sorts and out of step with what I wanted to be doing. Today was as productive and energetic as yesterday was sluggish.  That is why I try to be patient with myself on those days when I struggle energetically. I know that if I keep moving, take steps forward in a positive direction, and continue to encourage myself, sooner or later I’ll feel better and can get back into a rhythm. I appreciated having regained the energy and enthusiasm to have a very good today. I don’t take these days for granted; when I have them I can work nonstop and barely break a sweat. That is how this day unfolded and I am grateful. I still have a few things I’d like to accomplish before I retire for the evening, but if I don’t accomplish a single additional thing, it’s all good.

Today begins the 48th week of the year; only four weeks to go and 2012 is in the books. Another year past. I can recall several months ago saying, “I’ll be glad when 2012 is behind me.” (I believe I said the same thing about 2011.) And I suppose at one level I will be glad–2012 was a difficult year piled on top of an even more difficult year. But as I think on it now, I might now say some different things about 2012 and what I learned from what I’d gone through in 2011; that 2012 has been a time of healing and recovery (though in the middle of the year I wouldn’t have been so sure about that.) Healing is a process that is not finished at this moment, but I am definitely better, stronger than I was at the beginning of the year. I still have my share of challenges–we all do, we likely always will in some form or another–but I am learning to manage them better. Or perhaps what I am learning is to manage myself better in the midst of everything.

Gratitude has been one of the more powerful healing tonics I’ve taken over the past year or so. It has been my ability to search for and discover the many things in my life to be grateful for that has kept me moving when I would have faltered and given up. The love of family and friends was another powerful instrument of healing in my life over the past two years in particular. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

I have not yet sat down to outline for myself how I would like for 2013 to unfold; after all I still have four weeks of 2012 to complete. I will spend some time contemplating the coming year in the days and weeks ahead. What are my hopes for myself? Where do I want to be, what do I want to be doing, and with whom? Where do I want to invest my time and energy in the year ahead? In addition to my paid work, what is my heart yearning to do, what is my spirit calling me to do? How can I find the place where  my “deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet?” Those are just a few of the questions I’d like to ponder as I consider the year ahead. Just a few of them…

I am grateful on this 500th day of posting Lessons in Gratitude that I still have something to say after this long period of time. I pray I will still have worthwhile ideas to share when I hit day 1000, should I still be writing this at that point. What I can say is that whether I post a blog every day, I will continue finding and expressing gratitude for the blessings in my life and will communicate that in whatever avenues are open to me. I hope you’ll continue to be with me on this journey. May each of us know happiness and the root of happiness. So be it!

It’s an odd thing being on the verge of a milestone. I published the first Lessons in Gratitude post on June 30, 2011, posting daily until I took a brief hiatus after 227 days. Then I picked it back up and have written these additional 272 days. While the purpose is not to congratulate myself for reaching various milestones, it is important nonetheless to acknowledge them. Tomorrow when I post my 500th blog (assuming all goes well in my world), it’ll likely be just another day. And while it’s cool to say I did something for 500 days, what’s more important is the impact that I hope these musings have had on people who happen to read them. I am grateful for everyone who has read this blog, whether you’ve been reading faithfully since the beginning or have only recently stumbled across it or you drop in periodically to see what’s happening. I write for us both: for me so that I continue to look for the blessings in my life every day, and for you in the event that something I write here inspires you toward expressing gratitude for the blessings in yours.

How long will I keep at it? I honestly don’t know. Periodically I hit a wall and I feel like I literally have nothing to say. I can always (not a word I use very often) find something I am grateful for; I need only to look around me and usually not very far to find something, often many somethings, that I am grateful for. At times I lose my words and fear that I won’t be capable of coherently expressing my point. That loss of verbal expression is alright, it has to be. I recognize it as a temporary condition that in time will pass. I do not “knock it out of the park” every night by any stretch of the imagination, but I show up ready to take a few swings at it. Sometimes showing up is as important as what happens once you’re there.

This is one of those evenings when the words are not flowing as easily as I’d like. I showed up, but my muse appears to have taken the night off. It’s sort of been that kind of day, and that’s alright. This has been a long, slow day. When I examine my to-do list, I note that I haven’t crossed anything of consequence off of it, yet I did manage to do some things today that weren’t on it. I suppose that perhaps means I broke even. What has been done has been done. What has not been done has not been done. Let it be… I can remember days not too long ago when by sheer act of will I made myself keep moving, keep working, keep taking action. I knew that if I sat down and gave in to what was bothering me, I wouldn’t get back up. I was able push through and knock major things of of some pretty sizable to do lists.

I have learned a lot about perseverance and overcoming my largest obstacle: my own self doubt. I’ve learned to keep breathing, be patient and gentle with myself, and stand strong in the midst of intense pressures. We are all capable of doing this–of finding our center, that core strength that I believe resides in each of us. For some of us we only learn about that strength when we face difficulties, and we sometimes get multiple opportunities to practice finding and enhancing that core. I’m grateful that when I’ve needed to draw on that strength, it was there, and while I can’t say with absolute certainty that I have an inexhaustible supply, I can say that it has always been there when I’ve called upon it.

Tomorrow is a new day filled with possibilities. Yes, there are things I’d like to accomplish, but will not consider it a failure on my part if I don’t cross multiple items off of my list. I will enjoy my last day off before beginning a new work week and be grateful for the time I spent with family. In the scheme of things, that’s all that matters anyway.

I am starting tonight’s blog a bit later than usual–it’s 11:11 here in the East. It has been a good day, another one spent with family enjoying one another’s company as well as accomplishing some tasks at home. I am content and grateful for many simple blessings.

I will end this day in part as I began it; remembering my father who would have been celebrating his 90th birthday today. And celebrate it he probably would. I imagine we’d have had a bash for him: 90 is nothing to sneeze at after all. His father, my grandfather, lived to be 100 and he definitely had a bash to celebrate that particular accomplishment. I’ve no doubt Dad would have enjoyed a party. He liked being celebrated and didn’t shy away from the spotlight; he was well known and deeply appreciated by many, many people. It’s quite odd to be without him.

Although his departure from this life two years ago wasn’t as devastating to me as my mother’s passing 17 years ago, I find that I miss him at odd times. And while I couldn’t bear to look at pictures of my mother after she died (I finally have some framed photos of her on my bookshelf for the first time since she died), it is the picture of my father looking into the camera and saluting that I’ve kept on the bookshelf in my bedroom where I can see it. During the tough times I faced throughout 2011 and much of 2012, that photo reminded me to “soldier on” through the challenges, which I did. In that sense, he’s still very much with me as I go through my days. And thanks to the photo, I think of him every day.

I am grateful for who he was and for who I am, those parts that I get from him, those ways in which I am like him. It almost always makes me smile when I recognize mannerisms, a particular way I might move, or how I hold my hands a certain way or other simple things that are similar to the ways in which he moved. My father was a singer–he had a very nice singing voice–and he sang a lot around the house. I think of him periodically when I’m singing: not when I’m playing my guitar, but when I’m walking around the house doing a chore (this morning it was while I was raking leaves) or in the car driving to the store, or in the everyday activities of life. And I am like him in some other important ways–like the commitment to service, civil rights and equality, toward working on behalf of others, for the good of our fellow beings. While both my parents served the community each in their own unique ways, my father’s more public service set an example for me and my siblings.

My father was far from perfect, and even in that he set an example, as I too am far from perfect. But perfection is not required of us, making an effort, trying, is. And trying to be the best human being one possibly can. In that, my father accomplished a great deal, and I can only hope to do the same. So I honor and salute him on what would have been his 90th birthday and express deep gratitude from all that I have learned and continue to learn from him. Thanks, and happy birthday Daddy.

So here we are on Thanksgiving evening here in the East. Some of us fortunate enough to have the financial means to gather with family and friends for a large elaborate meal, followed by football or game playing, engaging in conversation, etc. I am grateful to be able to join my sister Ruth and her husband, children, mother-in-law, and brother-in-law for their annual gathering. They have their traditional dishes–some of which are from my side of the family and others from the Lee side. This is my first Thanksgiving at the table with Ruth in nearly 30 years, when we convened at our sister Sandy’s house for dinner one year. Tonight, as with that night so long ago, the blessings of family and abundance are present and I am grateful.

This morning as I was writing in my journal I began to ponder the fragility of life, the wonder  of our existence on the planet. “Each human,” I wrote, “probably each being, but humans I know for sure are walking, living, breathing miracles. From the improbability of our conceptions to the division of cells and their differentiation into special cells that become our organs, our skin, muscles, and bones. The marvelous complexity of the brain–the super computer that runs everything else but that is dependent on the heart to keep pumping oxygen to it, which in turn is supplied by the proper functioning of the lungs. Oh yes indeed we are walking, breathing miracles.”

Last week I was talking to one of my sisters about a minor medical malady that I am facing at the moment. I remember saying to her that it’s a wonder we that we humans survive and thrive on this planet. There are so many mysteries, so many things we don’t know about the human body and how it functions, so many diseases, conditions, and illnesses that we can’t explain let a lone cure. There’s way more that we don’t know than we do in so many areas of endeavor, but around health and healing in particular.

“We pretend that we undersand the mysteries of the body, the mysteries of the Universe,” I continued in this morning’s journal, “but even the most brilliant scientist acknowledges that the more we discover about something, the more there is to learn, that it’s a never ending set of rooms–we unlock one door only to step into a room and encounter another.” We unlock one mystery that leads us to another one. This not knowing could be rather disconcerting, particularly in a society that wants to know and control everything. The truth as I see it is that in reality we control very little of what’s happening around us, sometimes even what is happening with our bodies. The best option I can see is to learn to be comfortable with the unknowns and ambiguities of daily life. Being grateful for the miracle of life, the delicate dance of atoms and molecules, cells and DNA, organs and systems and such offers a way to be firmly grounded in the present moment while life unfolds around us.

On this day in which much of the United States turns its attention, even if only momentarily, toward thankfulness and gratitude, I find that I continue to be grateful for the simple and yet profoundly complex dance of life itself. And I am grateful for the blessings of abundance that surround me: plentiful and nutritious food to eat, a warm safe place in which to take shelter, family and friends who love me, a good job that helps me meet my obligations and responsibilities. So many blessings, such deep gratitude. Life is good.

I am taking a long, slow exhale this evening. I realized earlier today that I sometimes have to remind myself to breathe deeply. In the rush and fast pace of these days, I have not made time for the simple act of breathing. It’s a good thing that breathing is part of our autonomic nervous system–that we don’t have to remember to tell ourselves to take in oxygen and let out carbon dioxide, otherwise many of us would be in serious trouble. I am grateful for that bit of divine engineering that allows my lungs to take in air, my heart to beat, and my digestive system to function without my conscious guidance.

I am struck once again by the insidiousness of perfectionism as it creeps into my subconscious, popping up periodically, particularly when I am in a self-evaluative mode. I was frustrated with myself for not having been prepared for a meeting this afternoon at work, wanting as I always did for it to be smooth and seamless and that I would have my act together and look the part of a leader. So when I felt like I bumbled and stumbled my way through the first part of the meeting (the second part went better) I was irritated with myself. In spite of the hours I spent poring over various documents, making notes and pondering how to pull the material together in a coherent presentation, I came to the meeting not having sorted it out or having it in any form worth sharing with my coworkers. I shared a little of my frustration with one of my colleagues afterward. She responded by reminding me, “You’ve been here one month. It’s okay that you don’t have it sorted out yet.” Oh. You mean I don’t have to have things fixed, organized, orderly, perfect in the first 3o days?

I had to laugh at myself a little bit, but then soberly remind myself that this is a marathon, not a sprint, that it takes time to get things moving toward where we all want them to go. This is another symptom of perfectionism–that not only am I supposed to have the answers, to know what’s needed to solve the problem, but I am also responsible implementing the solutions single-handedly. I see this as I look across the working lives of my siblings. We were all trained in one way or another to excel in whatever we chose to do. The end result is often a lot of good, high quality work put out there by one of us and a whole lot of stress, anxiety, overwork, and exhaustion. Doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, does it?

So the solution is to not take myself too seriously, and to depend on the people around me. No person is an island unto him/herself and so turning with trust and confidence to the people around me is the healthy thing to do, for myself and for the organization. I still have a lot to learn and I am grateful for the people who work with and around me. I think I can manage to keep my perfectionism in check while also still making sure I’m doing the good work I am charged to do. And in the meantime, perhaps I’ll remember to breathe.