Lessons in Gratitude

Tonight my son called me and we talked for an hour. I hadn’t spoken to him in a few weeks, so I was glad to finally catch up with him. We mostly talked about his music–he’s started up a band with his roommate and a couple of other chaps and they are practicing and recording and beginning to play gigs in San Francisco. He sounded good. It always squeezes my heart just a little to talk with him. He’s still sorting his life out, and seems to be doing it in a somewhat thoughtful way, I worry about him nonetheless. It’s sort of what I do and I think many mothers of sons do. It’s not that we don’t worry about our daughters; I definitely worry about my daughter. But the nature and quality of the worry is different, at least it is for me. Still, I am pleased and grateful to have finally heard from my son. He has promised he will keep in better touch, and I’ve no doubt he means it. We’ll see what better means.

I have to smile as I recall a conversation I had with one of the students who works in our office. He and another young man were talking about how they sometimes avoided calling their mothers, because no matter what the purpose of the original call, the conversation always turned to their grades and how they are doing in school. They definitely didn’t want to talk about that. From my perspective as a mother of a son the whole thing sounded a little weak. “Call your Mama,” I scolded them both, acting every bit the mother myself. “You don’t have to have a long, drawn out conversation about your grades. Say something evasive, but don’t not call your mother because she’s going to ask you how school is going.” They each looked appropriately chagrined and while I didn’t ask them to pledge to call their mothers, I hope they did.

My conversation with my son came at the end of a long day–or at least it felt long. Not the least of which was my evening commute–tonight clocking in at one hour and 51 minutes. I find myself wishing that I were Dorothy and could click my heels three times and say, “There’s no place like home,” and could magically bypass I-495 North and head straight home. No such luck. So I spent the evening with Jamie and Claire, the main characters of the audiobooks I’ve been listening to. This is book seven of seven and I am over halfway through listening to it. I’ve been listening to the saga of Claire and Jamie for over six months and find myself wondering who will entertain me when I’ve finished this book. But then I realize I have a few other books, including revisiting a series of 12 books I read or listened to a number of years ago. I will do what I can to ease the dragging by of the minutes in my car each night as I continue my process of befriending my commute. It is an arduous process.

I arrived home tired and cranky this evening, but for the most part have been patient with myself, allowing me to be just where I was, feeling however I was feeling rather than trying to ignore my overall state of disgruntlement and pretend to be fine. I recognize that there’ll be days like this–Mama said so after all–so I might as well relax and go with the flow. I am amazed (and relieved, once again) that tomorrow is Friday and that another week has flown by. I have things I need to take care of this weekend, but I also plan to spend some time with one, two, or all three sisters, perhaps not at the same time but hope to see at least one of them this weekend. This will serve remind me why I chose to live closer to them than to work, thus creating the commuting scenario that I now face each day. I also need to rest. I am tired and need to let my body refresh itself from the long week. That will be good.

I am grateful for each day, even the ones that find me cross and crabby. I know that these feelings pass and I find myself once again in a state of grace and equilibrium. The real me resides in a calm center that is unflappable and calm. When I can tap into that center, I breathe differently and know that everything is going to be alright. I don’t always get there, but I know that it’s there for me when I seek it. That is quite comforting. It’s time for me to take my rest. I will rise in the morning and start all over again, and as best I can will start out the day with a grateful heart.

Every day around this time I sit down at my computer and contemplate the day and what in it has piqued my interested in the gratitude department. Tonight is a somewhat amorphous, intangible feeling that by its nature is going to be tricky to describe. Lately I’ve been feeling a sense of what I can only describe as “rightness” about the path I am walking at the moment. While the particulars of this feeling are not crystallized or clarified (clarity about my life purpose has not exactly been present on a consistent basis, particularly in recent years) I can nonetheless sense glimmers of it, like seeing something just barely outside the periphery of my eyesight. I can’t tell yet what it is or what it means, but I can feel it coming.

If you asked me to point to the evidence supporting this feeling, I can’t. I’m not even sure I can point in the general direction of it. It’s almost silly to write about it, except that sometimes for me in the writing I find clarity. And I also wonder if you feel it too. A sense of slowly, inexorably moving into place and a whole bunch of other things moving into place around you. Is this what it feels like when the planets align for some spectacular celestial event? I wonder. It’s a little scary, actually. Because a part of me always worries a little that somehow I’m going to screw up whatever it is, that this right feeling will pass and the more familiar discomfort will return. That feeling good, as I wrote about the other day, is a temporary thing and that I should enjoy it while I can.

This is not a particularly useful feeling under which to operate, so I am choosing to feel and speak with a continued sense of optimism that indeed I can roll with whatever happens, and that what’s happening is good. I’ve spent too much time mired in sadness and depression and am no longer willing to continue residence in that particular place. I am testing the hypothesis that happiness, contentment, wellbeing is in large part a choice, a matter of perspective. And after years of operating from a glass-half-empty perspective, I decided a while ago–right in the midst of intense “suffering” and life drama–that I was going to raise myself up to a different place.  It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve definitely made progress. There are some who theorize that people who are genetically predisposed to suffer from depression might as well get used to it, that you’re just going to be sad. Well I’m not buying it, and am determined that genetics notwithstanding I’m going to continue on my upward spiral toward unprecedented gladness. If I don’t quite make it, it won’t be because I didn’t reach for it.

I’m not sure exactly where this sense of optimism and rightness is coming from, but I like it. I don’t think it’s simply a matter of a change in my fortunes, though that surely helps. (Or could it be that my change in fortunes came about as a result of my growing optimism? Hmmmm.) I am grateful to be in this space in this moment. I may not live here yet, but I am enjoying the visit.

Sometimes I am amazed to be living the life I’m living. It’s not so much that it’s a wonderful life or that I’m living out my wildest dreams or anything like that. It’s just really fascinating to be observing myself walking through my days. It can feel really quite surreal at times. I am grateful to be where I am at this moment in my life.

I remain grateful for the simple things. For the past two days my commute home has been a breeze–only 57 minutes yesterday and close to that today. I am continuing to work on getting myself into a sustainable rhythm that will make my time in the car relaxed and calm. It’s been a mixed bag; while I haven’t suffered from road rage (it’s mostly only been road irritation), I still want to be more chill and enjoy the drive. I’m going to be doing it for the next several months, so my plan is to enjoy it.

I still have a lot to do to get myself fully settled into the various elements of my life. Sometimes the simple act of figuring out what I’m going to have for dinner and then the process of preparing it can be overwhelming, depending on the kind of day I’ve had. I surrender at times and default back to having cereal for dinner. It’s quick, requiring  little in the way of prep time, and I don’t have to worry about what I need to fix for myself. My younger sister has chastised me roundly for this practice, and I am getting better at it. I am grateful for the extent to which I have gotten my act together and am moving forward, slowly but surely.

I am grateful for settling into my new job. Again there is a lot to learn, a lot that needs to be done, and many things that I need to approach carefully. But I am grateful to be contributing my ideas, insights, energy, and my voice in the various meetings and interactions in which I find myself. After months of not using my brain on the types of situations I like working in–those that require creativity and vision and planning and collaboration–it is so nice to be using it now, working on initiatives that will positively affect people’s lives. I’m glad to be working with a good group of people who in various ways are equally committed to doing good work on behalf of the various constituencies we serve.

Tonight I am really tired (again) and will sign off shortly. I also need to work on my physical energy level, though some of these efforts are going to take some time to establish. I realize periodically that I am not quite as young and adaptable as I once was, though I have surprised myself with my ability to bounce back from setbacks. I do hope to continue the progress I’ve made toward getting myself onto an even keel and staying there for a while. For now, the best I can do is be as patient as I possibly can and let things come to me rather than trying to chase them down or make them happen.

I look forward to continuing to settle down, even as I am mildly aware that they just might remain unsettled and a little unclear like the “snow” in a snow globe that’s just been shaken. I hope to approach that with the same degree of patience and calm that I’ve developed over the past several months and learn to roll with whatever’s happening at the moment. And through it all, as always, be grateful.

Each day I write this blog and post the link to Facebook, asking each night, “What are you grateful for this day?” And I wonder as different people read what they are experiencing about gratitude in their own lives. What are you grateful for each day as you take the few moments required to read these words? I hope sometime you’ll take a moment or two to tell me.

I am grateful for lessons learned most days. I have learned over time to be kinder, more patient and compassionate with myself as I go through the course of  daily life. There was a time when I wasn’t particularly kind to myself, particularly during those periods in my life when the external trappings of success were not evident. The beginnings of 2011 when I experienced my series of unfortunate events was one of those challenging times when I truly wondered if I’d angered the gods so great the misfortunes I suffered had seemed. But over the process of months I worked hard, struggled, cried a lot, and persevered to get to a point of relative wellbeing.  I definitely still struggled–my outward circumstances had not improved, though my inner responses to life challenges gradually steadied over time, and I learned to hold myself with compassion and gentle lovingkindness.

I had the help of a committed therapist, encouragement and support from family and a handful of close friends, and a fairly inexhaustible supply of grit and determination. There were times when I was not sure how I was going to make it through one more day; I was always pleasantly surprised when I did indeed wake up the next morning relatively in my right mind and ready to face the world again. Much of my blog writing back then was in gratitude for the gifts of perseverance and resilience that I tapped into quite often. I am grateful to this day for those gifts, which I know will continue to see me in good stead throughout the rest of my life.

I am grateful to have a smile on my face, a real one. During the height of my struggles last year, I developed the habit of what I call “smiling on purpose.” I would look in the mirror and break into the cheesiest grin I could manage. Even on days when I woke feeling anxious and fretful about my life circumstances, I would go into the bathroom and smile and laugh at myself in the mirror. I was aware of research that had shown that the human body will produce the same endorphins (the “feel good” hormones) when you fake laughter and smiling as it does when you’re laughing for real. The body doesn’t distinguish between what’s real mirth and what isn’t. So my smiling habit became part of my self-soothing, wellbeing-enhancing regimen. My therapist complimented me on many occasions for how well I was doing at keeping myself emotionally afloat in the midst of some pretty trying circumstances. I didn’t see it at the time, I thought I was barely keeping myself together. But now, some months away from those days I can see a little bit of what she was talking about. I have my share of challenges, but they are not debilitating. I have developed and sharpened the skills I need to take care of my heart.

These days I am grateful to feel good. I used to have a somewhat lower standard–I simply wanted to feel “not too bad.” It’s an odd feeling to say I feel good, and I have to resist the nervous fear that I’ll jinx it somehow. But living moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day means that however I’m feeling right now will be different from how I am feeling tomorrow. Whatever happens, I am learning to go with the flow and have that be alright. I still feel like I have a lot to learn about a lot of things. But  also know that I’ve come a long way and have learned a lot in the process–I have the scars and the wisdom to show for it. And I continue to be oh so grateful for the unfolding.

Ah, Friday night. May I say that I am grateful that it’s Friday night? I was doing the same thing that I do most days at this time: sitting on my sofa watching television after having eaten dinner. I sat with the tray on my lap for a while after I finished, as I often do, but at least I didn’t fall asleep with it there as sometimes happens. I am sitting in my living room writing this evening, which doesn’t guarantee that I won’t nod off while writing, but it’s less likely. It has been a long week, but a good one. And for that I am grateful.

Life is so interesting. It’s hard to believe that we are in the last few weeks of 2012. When I think about the year that has been 2012 it makes me shake my head a little. It has been a remarkable time in so many ways. I learned a lot about myself, about gratitude, about perseverance, resilience, and faith. A few months ago I was living on the other side of the country trying to sort out my “what’s next,” figuring out what I was going to do. I had reached the proverbial end of the road. I was at a point where I had to take a step, perhaps yet another leap of faith. But I wasn’t sure where it was going to come from. When and how it came was semi-miraculous. That is a story for another day.

Sometimes the only way to learn is by standing in the midst of the storm, arms outstretched head tilted back, face lifted toward the rain and wind. There’s nothing left but to be there in the midst of it all and let the storm blow over you. You’ll either be swept away or stay put, but either way you learn what you’re made of, you know whether or not you can withstand what life throws at you. I stood in the midst of a storm of loss and grief, pain and anger, and I came through it. At the time it was happening, I felt like I’d lost everything. Then I watched people who had been devastated by a natural disaster as they struggled to literally pick up the pieces of their lives from off the ground and rebuild and I realized that perhaps what I had experienced, while painful, wasn’t so bad. As I think on it now, I know what an important realization that was; what I was going through was difficult, but it wasn’t devastating, and I definitely wasn’t going to die from it (though at times I perhaps felt like I was.)

I am grateful for the struggles I went through, a few vestiges of which are still with me. They have given me such important perspectives on life, things I doubt I could have learned as well any other way. I am not anxious to repeat all the drama from that time, but I want to continue to integrate the lessons learned into my current life, to weave those threads of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear into the tapestry of my life.  They inform who I am today and how I walk through the world. The writer says, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, for those who have been trained by it, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace.” No, the discipline, the chastening, the drama wasn’t a whole lot of fun, but now, after the fact, I am learning from it. I’m looking forward to the harvest of peace; that hasn’t quite happened yet, though it’s close.

The year 2012 is slowly winding to a close. It’s hard to say what 2013 might bring; 2011 and 2012 provided more than enough drama to last me a while. But one thing I learned during these last couple of years it is that I a more than capable of standing in and dealing with whatever comes. I am looking forward to a quieter year ahead, though there’s no guarantees of anything of the kind. So I will keep doing what I’ve learned to do and practiced in the past year–live in the present, moment by moment, day by day and dwell in the unfolding. I know that sounds pretty deep, but it’s been working for me and I don’t see any reason to mess with that. So as 2012 draws down, I’m approaching each day with deep gratitude for my journey through these past 10 months and look forward with gratitude at all that lies ahead.

I am still working to get my sea legs under me, trying to find my balance and move forward in this brave new world in which I find myself. A few weeks ago I had a revelation about  time changes and time zones. We were preparing to “fall back,” that wonderful time of year when we turn our clocks back and hour and gain an extra hour of sleep and all the other things we look forward to during this annual fiddling with the clocks and time, etc. We look forward with equal dread and lament toward the inevitable “spring forward” in April of each year when we turn our clocks ahead one hour, thus losing the hour we gained in the fall. It always takes my body a few weeks to adjust to the new time and cope with the loss of that 60 minutes. I realized the other day as I was questioning why I was still so tired, dragging around, etc. that when I moved to Maryland from California (a little over one month ago), I essentially sprung forward by three hours. Perhaps it is purely my imagination, but it helps me make sense of why I am still struggling with sleep and energy issues.

Then there’s the adjusting to my work and commute schedule. After working part time for the past few years, I must say that it’s been quite an adjustment to now working greater than the standard eight-hour work day and then climb into my car for the 75, 90, 120 minute ride home. By the time I get home most evenings it is after 7 p.m. and by the time I’ve walked Honor (usually within the first five minutes I am home) and fed her, it’s 7:30. I fix and eat dinner, usually in front of the television watching some news show before retiring back to my room to  do a few things, then write my blog and head off to bed. On nights like tonight I fall asleep with my laptop on my lap and wake up to discover  a long row of kkkkkkkkkkkkks that I’ve inadvertently typed as I drifted off to sleep. In spite of this somewhat helter-skelter evening schedule, I find that I am grateful nonetheless for this crazy life that I’m living right now.

Life is challenging, quirky, hectic, confusing, beautiful, angst-filled, wonderful, exhausting, and so many other adjectives one might conjure up. I have often described my life at times like one long ride on a mechanical bull (which I’ve taken to calling Mephistopheles), whipping me this way and that, back and forth, up and down, side to side. My brother once suggested to me that he could reach in and yank all the wires out of Mephisto, effectively stilling him and allowing me to temporarily slide off his back and enjoy some stillness. My recent life has had its share of challenges, but I gratefully accept them as being a new and different kind of crazy. Good crazy. One writer says, “I’ve learned that in whatever condition I find myself, to be content in that. I’ve had highs and lows, I’ve been hungry and I’ve been full. I’ve lived poor and have lived in abundance.” That’s what I’d like to be true of how I live my life: no matter what’s going on, I have learn to be content. I am working on this, though I have not quite arrive there yet. It’s definitely worth striving toward.

It could be a while yet before I am finally acclimated to my new time zone, new weather, etc. and settle in to life. In the meantime, I will continue to express gratitude for the progress I have made toward this goal. Gratitude expressed every day, in some small way, is what keeps me going, keeps me navigating these sometimes choppy and uncertain seas. Thank you for coming along with me on the ride.

It has been a long, good day. After being up into the wee hours of the night last night watching election returns, somehow the alarm ringing at 5:30 seemed somehow surreal and otherworldly. I had known of course, as I waited to see what would happen in the presidential and other elections, that it was going to be a very long night. I was surprised when the waiting ended abruptly and the election was called. It seemed like after all the waiting it had ended quite suddenly. Then of course there was the usual rigamarole with the losing campaign making concession speech, then a delay before the victor came out to the wildly enthusiastic approval of the cheering hoards to offer a victory speech. By the time it was all said and done it was after 2 a.m. before I finally went to bed. I was amazed that I didn’t drag around more at work today, but I seemed to remain relatively alert and engaged in spite of my lack of restorative sleep.

The commute home this evening was another dreadful one, though not nearly as dreadful as the two plus hour crawl on Monday night. Tonight was only an hour and 45 minutes, the usual crawl on 495 North, then an accident on 495 West close to my normal exit but backed up for miles. I got off a few exits earlier, grateful as I often am that I have not one but two GPS devices to help me navigate my way through unfamiliar areas. I have had days when the commute isn’t so bad; even this evening as tired as I was I entertained myself with my audiobook of which I still have another 15 hours or so of listening pleasure. As it appears that my nightly drive home will likely always exceed one hour and likely be closer to an hour and a half, I will continue to listen to the longest books I can find–good ones of course, but long ones nonetheless.

I am grateful for my life at the moment. Although I still have a few bumps I need to iron out in tying up loose ends from my move I am nonetheless feeling calm and almost content with how things are unfolding. A year ago I was anxiously waiting to hear back from a prospective job I’d interviewed for. I had the qualifications and overall it had seemed to me that I fit well in the scheme of the organization. As the days dragged into weeks without my hearing from them, I had eventually concluded that I wasn’t their candidate of choice. When I finally did hear from them it was one of the tackiest rejection letters I’d ever received. It told me that perhaps I had overestimated the caliber of the organization given how they’d handled the situation. Of course what I know now is that position in that place at that time simply wasn’t for me. I have come to believe that everything has an appointed time, that there is such a thing as destiny, fate, whatever you want to call it. It simply wasn’t “in the cards” for me to have ended up in that job.

Now here I am a year later understanding that I am meant to be where I am right now, that the doors opened the way they did for me to be out here living near my three much-loved sisters and on the path of my “what’s next.” So many things I didn’t understand in terms of the way my life unfolded over the past two years. But even when I didn’t understand, I learned to persevere through the tears, pain, anxiety and fear and to remain as steadfast and calm in the face of uncertainty as I possibly could. In addition to perseverance I learned a lot about patience, about waiting, about having faith that in spite of how things looked, everything was going to be alright.

So yes, I am content. I used to be scared to say that, fearing that if I actually acknowledged I was sort of happy that something would come along to wreck it. Now I am coming to understand that everything changes. The Buddhists talk about impermanence–it is one of the three marks of existence. It is a basic understanding that everything is in a constant state of flux. As such it behooves me to remain as flexible and fluid as I can so I can roll with whatever happens. Of course I don’t always accomplish this, but I do strive for it and it has helped me remain on a somewhat even keel throughout the various slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that have flown my way in recent years. I am grateful for the gifts of resilience, perseverance, patience and grace. I have cultivated them over the past while and am always pleased and gratified that when I need to reach for them, they are there, a reliable wellspring of nourishment. I will continue to reach for them in the times ahead as I allow my what’s next to continue to unfold.