Lessons in Gratitude Day 471

Posted on October 28, 2012 by mtchamblee

Today has been a really low key day, which has been a pretty good thing. Tonight is one for simple gratitude.

I spent a delightful afternoon with my younger sister. It wasn’t so much that we did tons of fun stuff–mostly we sat and talked, having a late lunch together at my house and drinking tea while chatting about various issues. It has been wonderful spending time with my sisters in the weeks since I moved here. While I’m sure I’ll get accustomed to being close by and spending time with them, I don’t think I’ll take it for granted and will, if anything, find myself hanging out with them even more in the months ahead.

Today was likely the better day of the two days of the weekend to hang out. This part of the country is on hurricane watch as a storm is threatening to blow up the Atlantic coast and turn left right in the part of the country where I now live. The wind and rain might start as early as tomorrow (Sunday), so this morning I decided I’d better get out to the store and do a few other things before the weather turned. By the time I got to the grocery store, all the bottled water–large bottles and small–were cleared off the shelves. I sure hope I don’t need water. I haven’t totally given up on finding some, but in the meantime I’ll be filling up all kinds of receptacles with water. I suppose if the storm does hit I’ll fill up all my pots and pans with water before the power goes out.

It’s an odd thing preparing for something like a hurricane. I haven’t had to do it before, (and thus have no bottled water.) I have no idea what the storm will be like–a small part of me is kind of curiously excited. As I think more about it I realize that I appreciate knowing that something is coming. You can see and know a hurricane is approaching; and if you can see a storm coming, you can prepare for it. Unlike an earthquake, which seems to come out of nowhere or a tornado that can form so quickly you can scarcely take cover before it hits, you know a hurricane (or a blizzard for that matter) is coming and to a certain extent where and when.

I’ve had a few earthquakes and tornadoes hit in my life–difficult, devastating life events that seem to hit out of nowhere, wreaking havoc, leaving damage and destruction in their wake. As is the case with natural disasters, life disasters often require a lot of time to clean up and recover. I spent much of 2011 cleaning up after the challenges that hit in my life and 2012 has been about rebuilding. I still have my share of struggles, but they are more like thunderstorms–a lot of lightening and thunder, wind blowing, but no major damage. I am grateful for the perspective I’ve gained in the rebuilding months. I have learned what I am made of, what I can withstand. I have learned to reach out and ask for help when I’ve needed it and have been gratified at the way people have responded. I have reached out even from my own need and offered assistance to others who were likewise in need. I have learned to stand strong even in the midst of the storm.

I will spend a little time tomorrow preparing myself a little more for the approaching storm. I have made sure that I have flashlights and good batteries and food that I can prepare without power (it’ll be cold but edible). I’ll take a few other precautions as the next few days unfold. I am grateful that in some ways the life  storms that have blown through my life have taught me to prepare for the natural storms. I will be respectful and cautious but not fearful or foolish. All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 470

Posted on October 26, 2012 by mtchamblee

Thank goodness for Friday. It has felt like a really long week.. Generally I still set my alarm to wake me relatively early on the weekends, but tomorrow I just might turn everything off and wake up when I wake up. Generally this still ends up being relatively early–8 or 8:30 or so–but compared to 5:45 or 6 a.m. that’s downright decadent. It has been a challenging week in a variety of ways, but a good one nonetheless. I am exceedingly grateful to be at the end of it. Weekends can be tricky as well. It’s kind of like the time to exhale deeply and examine all the things you’ve been too busy during the week to think about. While things are for the most part humming along relatively well, I am still taking care of some leftovers from having moved from California. Some of these things are enough to keep me awake at night, if I let them. So the key is to not let them. Easier said than done, right?

I had many months when I woke early in the morning, heart pounding, limbs on fire, mind whirling with anxiety and fear. There were days when I wasn’t sure how my head remained attached to my shoulders the pressure was so intense. But I learned to be with it, to work through it, to over come it, to give in to it. I learned how to dance in the moment, taking whatever it brought. I don’t want to make myself sound wonderful, I was quite terrified sometimes, completely uncertain about how things were going to work out. Yet in the midst of all of that I kept telling myself that everything would be alright, that all would be well.  And it wasn’t denial or a pollyanna view of the world; I really did at my core know that in spite of all the visual evidence to the contrary, everything would in fact be alright. If I could hold onto that in the midst of what I was going through back then, I can definitely count on that in my current circumstances which while not perfect are significantly better than they were before.

So when I see a friend struggling under the yoke of their own circumstances, I try to encourage them that all is and will be well. I know what she’s going through and I also know what she’s made of. Like me, she has a strong inner core that is steadfast and rock steady. Even in the midst of the storms blowing around her, that piece of her is calm and assured and clear in the knowledge that all shall be well. As I’ve prayed for her throughout this week it has been as much that she’ll remember what she’s made of  as it’s been about asking God to ease her circumstances. I have to believe that the way through some of these slings and arrows of outrageous fortune it to tap into that stillness and operate from that place. Again, easier said than done; but what could be a better expenditure of energy than to expend it learning to cultivate the practice and quality of equanimity–of balance and calm in the midst of the madness.

I don’t claim to have all the answers. And I still get angry and sad, grief-stricken and depressed, and myriad other emotions. But their impact is much less and the duration of time I’m in one of those states is much shorter than it used to be. I am grateful for learning to trust and lean into that inner strength that seems to be present in a nearly inexhaustible supply. Tonight when I take my rest it will be with a prayer in my heart for my friend and what she’s going through, that she’ll tap into that deep pool of wisdom, resilience, and strength that I know is in her very DNA. And I’ll take a few minutes to draw on my own inner resources, calm and quiet my mind, and be grateful.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 469

Posted on October 25, 2012 by mtchamblee

What would happen if everyone took a few minutes every day doing something they totally loved doing: playing basketball, crocheting a sweater, bowling, riding their motorcycle, camping out, painting, playing an instrument, planting a garden, stargazing, birdwatching, bungee jumping, cooking, playing with their dog…Every person, everywhere, every day. What would happen? What would the world be like? Can you imagine it?

I just spent a half hour playing my guitar and singing. I came home from work very tired, from nonstop meetings to the 70-minute commute, stopping at the store for creamer for my morning coffee, and walking the dog around the yard for 20 minutes. I came inside, fed her, then took my guitars back to my room and for the first time since leaving California (and for a few weeks prior to that) I played my guitar and sang my little heart out. One of the advantages of living in a single-family home versus a condo where you share walls with your neighbors is that you can’t really belt out a good song as loud as you want to for fear of disturbing them. So I sang and sang until my voice got a little hoarse and decided I’d better stop for a bit. But it got me thinking about how different the world would be if everyone took a little time every day to do something they loved.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to do something they love for a living. Many people work places they wouldn’t necessarily go to if they had a choice to do something else someplace else. Most people manage to make the best of this situation, finding things in their jobs that they enjoy doing enough to keep them going there. Some people absolutely love what they’re doing to the extent that they can’t imagine doing anything else and feel incredibly lucky to be getting paid to do something they’d do for free. Some of us come to love what we do even though perhaps it didn’t start out that way. And then there are some people who are downright miserable at their jobs, they don’t like their work and dread getting up and going there every day. But what if everybody was given an hour or so every day to do something they totally loved doing. Would it change the workplace? Would people be kinder and gentler to one another? Would it make any difference at all in the world. I have to think so.

Life has its stresses and disappointments, its challenges and triumphs, its ups and downs. Sometimes we are too busy or too tired or too something else to devote a little time to doing something we love. I know, sometimes it takes too much energy even to do something you enjoy doing. Sometimes the most difficult part of the process is picking up the guitar or walking out onto the basketball court, or dusting off your paints and canvas. Once you get started, immersing yourself in this forgotten passion, the exhaustion melts away and you lose all sense of time for a little while. You are totally in it. If you have a passion, a hobby, a gift or talent you love to practice and you have the means and opportunity to do it, you simply must find ways to do it. It will feed your soul and make some of the perhaps less palatable aspects of life so much more tolerable if not downright enjoyable. There are many hobbies I’ve sort of stopped doing over the past couple of years. I’m not sure when or how I’m going to take them back up given time constraints and other impedimenta intruding upon my ability to restart them, but I’m determined I’m going to get back to at least one of them sometime soon.

I am grateful for the gift of music and what it represents in my life. “Sing!” my friend joHn admonishes me frequently, and I do my best to do just that–belting out songs in my car on my way to work some mornings. But it’s even more special when I’m playing my guitar and singing my favorite songs–my own or other’s. I can close my eyes and feel the song (which I can’t do when I’m in my car on the way to work!) Whatever that well-loved activity is for you, please, find a way to do it. Make the space in your life, in your house, in your back yard, in your heart to do this. You won’t be disappointed. In fact, you just might start a revolution.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 468

Posted on October 24, 2012 by mtchamblee

At the risk of sounding like a broken record I want to state yet again how grateful I am to have wonderful friends and family in my life. Where would I be without them? So today I got a text from my daughter informing me that my voice mailbox was full so she couldn’t leave me a message when she called me. I must confess that my voice mailbox is full because I keep phone messages like some people keep old letters and greeting cards. At least one of the messages on my phone is over six years old. And I’m not even embarrassed by that fact. Nevertheless I knew I had to make room in my mailbox. So, in order to figure out what messages to delete, I had to listen to them all. You can imagine that this took some time, but through the entire process I heard all kinds of messages of personal and historical significance.

Some of the calls were funny–various members of my family singing happy birthday to me and their laughing acknowledgment of their lack of musical talent, my son recounting some really cool happenings with people he was working on a project with, my daughter congratulating me on getting a new job. Others were poignant–a friend struggling through and trying to reconcile a difficult relationship, a parent concerned about a child who was having problems. All of these little stories recorded in 30 second, 90 second, three minute messages. They are little snapshots of life, spoken, sung, cried in the voices of people I know and love reminding me yet again how fortunate I am to have people in my life who love, support, and care for me and for each other.

One of my relatives who is having a difficult time at work has been able to reach out to a number of different ones of us for assistance and guidance in navigating the struggles, developing approaches and strategies that will hopefully lead to a clear and positive outcome. It’s great to be on the receiving end, but even better to be on the giving side. My family has stepped up in so many ways to help me over the past two years, it feels really good for me to be finally turning a corner and slowly moving into a position to be able to help others. I haven’t quite gotten there yet in terms of finances, but I’m definitely ready to commit time and energy to the cause. Somehow as I continue the process of getting acclimated to my new surroundings I’ll be able to do even more.

Yesterday I wrote about how I believe people hunger for genuine connection with other people. There are people who ache with loneliness and isolation, some of whom are literally right around us: coworkers and colleagues, the neighbors across the street, the people at the train station, sometimes people in our own families. While I am grateful to have strong, connected relationships with many in my family and friends scattered across the country, I think about people who are not fortunate to have the and where I can I reach out and connect with the people around me. Either directly or by proxy, I am reaching out to people around me and as best I can offering connection, even if only briefly. And thus supported, they perhaps turn around and reach out to someone else in a “pay it forward” kind of way.

Listening to all those old voicemail messages today reminded me that I am loved and that I give love. It really doesn’t get much better than that.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 467

Posted on October 23, 2012 by mtchamblee

Everyone should have a place to go where they can say whatever they need to say, to complain about whatever they need to get off their minds, to say every foul swear word their mother never let them say, where they feel totally safe to talk about what’s hard about their lives (or what’s wonderful for that matter) without fear of being judged or laughed at or envied or any of that stuff. For most of my life I’ve been a listener. I’ve done my best to provide people a space where they can say what they need to say, yell, cry, complain, etc. I don’t know how it started or why, but I have been a listener from the time I was a kid. It’s kind of like being a confessor, except I don’t offer absolution and I definitely don’t speak for God. I just try to listen. It is a gift, a skill that I want to cultivate and strengthen. People want to be heard, to be known and understood. I believe we humans fundamentally want to connect with others, and sometimes we simply don’t know how.

I am a bit muddled this evening, trying to find words to name what I am feeling. There’s a feeling in the air that I can’t quite articulate. I am hoping that in my listening I will hear and get clarity about what it is and can speak it. It’s in part about reaching out and connecting with one another. There’s a deep hunger for connection, for purpose and meaning, for something that’s almost indefinable. As much as I would like to describe it, I can’t seem to get at it. Perhaps I am trying to describe what Mary Chapin Carpenter sings about in the song, “A Place in the World” that someplace where we totally belong, doing what it is we’re put on the planet to do. I’ve spent a lot of time over the course of my life trying to find my place in the world the place that Theologian and writer Frederick Buechner calls, “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” That place where my talents, skills and passions are rightly aligned with the work I am doing. I keep getting closer all the time. It is a fortunate person indeed who lands in the place just right where all those things come together and you find yourself doing exactly what you’re uniquely designed to do. How cool would that be?

I am grateful and content with the knowledge that part of what I was put here to do was to listen and support, to hear what’s not being said as clearly as what is and to help people feel that they’ve been heard and understood and that what they’ve said matters. There are other things I am called to do at this moment in my life, some of them I know, some I don’t. Whatever the case I’ll keep walking the path and picking up the clues along the way. I have to smile and shake my head at myself this evening. Sometimes what I want to write comes clearly and easily, and other times I struggle, watching the blinking cursor of death flashing balefully on the blank page.  At times like this I am grateful for the faithful folks who follow this blog and indulge my periodic ramblings. I also encourage you to open your heart and close your eyes and feel into your own energy to see what’s calling to you and what you’re sensing that the world is hungry for. I might not be able to describe it to you, but without much effort you can experience it for yourself.

Tonight I will rest. Tomorrow I will rise, write in my journal and get on with another day. I still have a lot of questions and unknowns and the occasional struggles in my life at the moment. There’s no doubt in my mind, however, that all shall be and in fact all is well.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 466

Posted on October 22, 2012 by mtchamblee

I am so grateful for the people in my life–family, friends, acquaintances, past loves, and even antagonists and nemeses. All have served a vital role in my life, in my growth and development, in the emergence of who I am at this hour of this day. The people around us make us better, make us stronger, give us life. I have been thinking about this a lot lately, both when I encounter the good and wonderful things that people have been to and done for me, as well as those who have treated me badly, been unfair or dishonest, or simply neglected me. If I can recognize these various people as the gifts they are, I will be that much farther ahead and will have gained a depth of understanding that fosters an even greater sense of appreciation for the beings with whom I am in community on this planet.

Case in point: yesterday I wrote about two separate issues I dealt with that caused me some emotional discomfort (from which I have subsequently moved on.) Almost as soon as I posted the blog, I heard from my daughter checking in to make sure that I was okay–I guess I sounded more upset than I actually was. At least by the time I was writing the blog I had recovered a sense of equanimity about what had happened. Then this morning first thing my brother texted me also asking me if I was okay. I have an announcement: I am okay! I had thought that perhaps the tenor of the blog itself would indicate that, yes, icky things happen sometimes, but we learn from them and they can strengthen us if we let them. It is the difficulties and our ability to bounce back from them that I was expressing gratitude for last night. Today I am grateful for those folks who wanted to check in on me to make sure I was alright.

I am also grateful for those of you who read this blog. Whether you read faithfully every day, or simply peek in periodically, I am touched and gratified by those of you who read and comment back to me periodically. Today I had a message from an old childhood friend who had been reading my blog aloud to her mother, who is in the hospital recovering from an unexpected illness. Her mother, who essentially watched me grow up, commented  positively about the blog and appreciated what I had written. But apparently, unbeknownst to them, a member of the janitorial staff of the hospital had been cleaning the room and listening to my friend read the blog. “I wasn’t aware that the cleaning woman was in the room, she stopped working and listened,” my friend reported to me. “She, (the cleaning woman), had tears running down her face and asked what was I was reading? So, your lessons are being read and enjoyed by many.”

Often we do not know the impact we–our words, our actions, our very presence–has on the people around us. Sometimes I write and post this blog without any knowledge of who’s “out there” reading these words and what the impact of these reflections are on others. Some days I feel like I can’t string two coherent sentences together and I hope people reading it can derive some benefit from it. And when I think what I’ve posted is introspective navel gazing on my part, I will hear from someone about something they appreciated in that particular post. I continue to be inspired, uplifted, and motivated by the possibility that something I’ve written gives a reader pause to contemplate, celebrate, and appreciate the many blessings we have in our lives, for the beauty that’s all around us, for the calm in the midst of the storms. I am grateful to be touched by people and be able to touch and inspire them in return. For me that is the gift and the blessing.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 465

Posted on October 21, 2012 by mtchamblee

Sometimes in the midst of struggle it can be difficult to form and write words that express positive attributes like gratitude, resolve, understanding, commitment, equanimity, peace, etc. Things happen that make you ask, “Seriously?” Or something happens to you in which you find yourself on the receiving end of something so terribly unfair, unjust, or just plain wrong that you cannot find or form words to voice your anger, the sense of helplessness, the inability to say or do anything that can make right something that has gone terribly wrong. And yet, somehow in the midst of all of this drama, you must find a way through it to the gratitude, the understanding, equanimous space that resides at the center of your self. I’ve exercised that particular muscle a lot over the past 18 months and am relieved and grateful to find it present and strong as ever.

The fact is that life is frequently unfair. People are unkind, unethical, uncaring, un-lots of things, and we find their behavior baffling at best, hurtful and devastating at worst. We are constantly bombarded by all kinds of icky stuff that life throws at us that leaves us gasping for breath and shaking our heads (and sometimes our fists) at the heavens asking why. We may feel as if we’re minding our own business, trying to be a good person, doing the best we can with what we have, living as honorable a life as we can, when WHAMMO! something suddenly comes along and flattens us. Even as I type this I have to smile and shake my head. The image of Wile E Coyote popped into my head as a safe or a piano or a huge rock hurtles down toward him and as he sees it coming he does something ridiculously ineffectual like opening an umbrella to cover himself from the impending calamity.

In 465 days of writing this blog I have commented many times that even at some of the most challenging circumstances and on the most difficult days, there is always, always (always) something to be grateful for, something, some one thing that I can look to to provide that spark of light that reminds me that no matter what is going on, no matter how hard some things are I can find something good, something beautiful. Today I spent some time with two of my sisters. That in and of itself is a gift and a blessing to me. While I was chatting with one sister I got some difficult news that I didn’t react particularly well to (I had to apologize to her more than once for my liberal use of foul language) and later in the day while talking with the other sister I received another piece of information that likewise sent me tumbling over the edge. (I need to put about $2.00 in my “swear jar.”) I didn’t manage either thing particularly well and while I’d like to say I am over both matters, I still am struggling a bit with them. They will likely continue to sting for a day or two. But in the scheme of things, neither of these things are terribly important. I will likely be over them relatively quickly.

I am grateful tonight for resilience, that wonderful ability to bounce back. I think I must have some synthetic material in my DNA by now, I’ve had to bounce back so much. Over the course of my lifetime, many difficult things have happened and I am alive and relatively well and can not only talk about them coherently and calmly, but can also understand why they happened, and why in some cases they had to happen in order to help me grow and move along toward becoming the person I am right now. Many of these experiences were difficult and painful, and at the time I could not see how I was going to make it through, how I would ever feel good again. But I did heal, I was able to pull myself together and move on.

This evening as I walked my sister out to her car, I looked up and noticed the moon hanging over the house and the twinkling of stars as the evening darkened into nighttime. We both stopped and commented on how beautiful it was. I realized that it’s the first glimpse I’ve had at the moon since I arrived here three weeks ago. It’s a quarter moon with a full moon to follow soon. I’ve been a stargazer, a wannabe astronomer my whole life and have loved gazing at the moon. For a moment, standing there at my sister’s car staring up into the cosmos, all the angst of the earlier part of the day melted away. “Go write your blog,” my sister told me as she prepared to leave, “Write about how beautiful the moon is this evening.” And so I am. Mama said there’ll be days like this, oh yes she did. The good news is that they pass. Tomorrow morning I start with a new set of downs so to speak (sorry for the football metaphor…) I will awaken to a new day, new possibilities. And for that, I continue to be grateful.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 464

Posted on October 20, 2012 by mtchamblee

This week I spent a lot of time navigating to get myself from one place to the next. In some cases, I was figuring out my daily commute, in others it was simply getting out to the right building on campus. I spent a lot of time pondering the best routes to get from my job in Virginia to my home in Maryland that is 26.4 miles away. Depending on where one lives, 26.4 miles doesn’t seem that far, but when you live anywhere near Washington DC, driving 26.4 miles can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and 45 minutes, as I learned during my commutes home from work this week. The drive to work has been a consistent 40 to 45 minute drive. The ride home has been an adventure–my first return trip was the one that took nearly two hours. In the five days I commuted to and from work this past week, the average time getting to work was about 45 minutes and the average return trip was probably somewhere around an hour and 15 or 20 minutes or so. As I wrote earlier this week, I am making friends with the commute. But it isn’t the commute time I want to focus on as I think and write about gratitude this evening–it’s the navigation process.

I have been directionally challenged for most of my life–I’ve always gotten “turned around” pretty easily and have gradually learned not to be too hard on myself about this. My attitude has been that as long as I have three things, I don’t mind getting a little lost: time, daylight, and gas. If I am not in a hurry or trying to get someplace by a particular deadline, I am often not terribly worried about getting lost. As long as I have gas enough to get me where I’m going (or at least to the next gas station), then even if I get turned around I’m not going to run out of fuel while I get it sorted out. And, I’m not a big fan of trying to figure out where I am once the sun has gone down–driving around an unfamiliar city or on a confusing stretch of road is not my idea of a good time. So the advent of satellite navigations systems a few years back has been a real boon to me. When I first moved to California and purchased a new vehicle, I bought one that had a built-in navigation system so I could find my way around the San Francisco Bay area. It has saved me more than once and continues to help me find my way around my new environs–the new city, new confusing highways and routes, etc. have been made much more manageable because of my car’s navi system, as has the one on my smartphone.

Over the last two years I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and sometimes writing about own my internal navigation system: the part of me that helps guide me through the often confusing, sometimes treacherous waters through which I have to sail or the proverbial “mean streets” I’ve had to negotiate in making my way back from the series of unfortunate events that had detoured me off my desired path. I haven’t always been sure of where I was going or how I was going to get there, but somehow the internal navigation system has moved me along. When I’ve made a decision that turns me in a direction opposite to where the navi system told me to go, it doesn’t chastise me and I don’t end up in a ditch, it simply recalculates and gives me new directions to  my destination. There is no “wrong turn.” My internal navigation system always gets me where I’m going; taking a wayward turn just means it’ll take me a little longer to get to my desired destination. What’s most important is having a sense of where I want to go. A navigation system really only works if I give it the correct destination. The extent to which I’ve periodically strayed off course has been due in part to my lack of specificity in setting the destination.

All of this is a fancy metaphorical way of saying that I have to learn to trust myself and the decisions I make, that they will lead me where I want to go. It might not be the simplest or easiest path; the road I take could be twisting and winding and steep, but it will get me where I’m going. I was talking to a friend today who has a difficult decision to make. I wish I could tell him what to do, but he knows that in the final analysis the decision is entirely up to him that he is “in it by himself.” He has said that no matter how much external support he has and who is affected by it, ultimately it is him alone who has to make and live with the decision. I would remind my friend that he cannot make a wrong turn, that no matter what he decides the Universe and his own internal navigation system will recalculate the route and he’ll still get where he’s going. That is something he’s going to have to discover for himself. In the meantime, I will continue praying for him and offering him my own unwavering support as he navigates his way through to his “what’s next.”

I am grateful for the navi that guides me on a daily basis. I have moments when I am positive that I’ve gotten myself hopelessly lost and cannot find my way out of what I’ve gotten myself into. But when I am patient with myself, slow down, take some deep breaths and remind myself that everything is in fact going to be alright, somehow I find myself back on the “right” path. This has been and will continue to be true. And for that, I am exceedingly grateful.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 463

Posted on October 20, 2012 by mtchamblee

Tonight as I predicted I would be, I am exhausted. I already sat nodding off while watching television earlier this evening, and just woke up to find my computer on my lap and the blog not started. I only have the energy to write a few lines this evening with a promise to do a little better tomorrow.

I am grateful for the close of a long week–a good week to be sure, but a long one nonetheless. I met a few dozen people, participated in meetings during which I was somewhat inundated with information, and learned at least a half dozen ways to get from my office to a particular building in which I attended meetings and was treated to lunch a few times this week. Yep, this has been a good week, information overload notwithstanding. I was congratulated by a few of my new coworkers for having “survived” my first week in my new role. I had to smile at that, though I suppose congratulations are in order. It’s been a long while since I have experienced a first week at work. I am grateful for the opportunity to be continuing the work I’ve been doing now for over 25 (closer to 30) years, and to be doing it with a great group of colleagues is very satisfying. I am looking forward to settling in a little better and getting into the flow and rhythm of the place. We shall see how it unfolds in the days and weeks ahead.

Tonight as I fight off sleep I also want to express gratitude again for now living in close proximity to my sisters. Today I experienced the fun of engaging in an adventure with my younger sister as we stood in line together to hear the President (of the United States) speak at a campaign event that was held on our campus today. We stood in line for hours, and stood the entire time as we waited for the President to arrive and address the large crowd standing in a mass in an outdoor intramural athletic field. Hearing the president speak was interesting and exciting at one level, but for me the best part of it was hanging out with my sister and sharing a kind of cool, historic event with her. A colleague from work and one of our nephews were there as well, but as I reflect on it now, what I am most grateful for is the opportunity to share it with her. It’s another event to record in our memories to be retrieved later on as old ladies, “Remember that time when we went to hear the President speak…?” I look forward to creating many such memories in the time to come.

I look forward to a nice deep exhale this weekend. I get to spend a few hours with my oldest sister on Saturday. It’ll be my first time seeing her since I moved out here to her neck of the woods. I’m looking forward to connecting with her. I imagine I’ll see my other big sister this weekend sometime as well, making it a three-for-three kind of weekend. I also plan to try to catch up on my sleep so I can return to work on Monday refreshed and a wee bit more adjusted to the time zone and rhythm of the place. I am grateful indeed to have made it through my first week at work. I am looking foward to a new day, new week full of new possibilities. But first, some sleep!

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 462

Posted on October 18, 2012 by mtchamblee

I fully expect that tomorrow night when I get home from work I am going to want to plop onto my sofa and vegetate in front of the television for the entire evening. I’ll probably write an abbreviated blog and will conk out, turning off both alarms and planning to “sleep in” on Saturday. (Of course I haven’t slept in for months and am not sure my body would do it if I tried it.) This week has felt nonstop and late this afternoon I felt like I was on information overload. And this after only the first four days. I need to amp up my vitamin and supplement intake. And, I need to get more sleep. I am grateful nonetheless for the transitions I’m still in the midst of and am continuing to practice patience with myself as best I can.

Two weeks ago I completed the 2800 mile cross-country drive, landing in the greater Washington DC metropolitan area. My body is still at least partially on West Coast time (Unfortunately, I go to bed at California time and wake up on Maryland time), though each day I’m getting a little more acclimated to the time zone. Each day I get a little more comfortable with my 26 mile commute, trying to understand and flow with the patterns of traffic as well as the scenery and signs along the way. Each day I find reasons I’m grateful for living where I do–from the morning songs of robins and cardinals, the shrieks of blue jays and the chattering of squirrels, and all manner of natural sounds, to the overall sense of comfort I feel here.

Today, though, I felt a twinge of homesickness for California–I still get emails from the meditation center where I spent so much time last year. I am sad to be missing so many good classes being offered by the wonderful and diverse teachers and appreciated by a very diverse group of sangha members. I miss weekly breakfasts with my friend Mary, weekly coaching chats with my friend Nancy, and lunch with my friend Roland. I miss the sight of the San Pablo Bay as I turned onto my street in Pinole and the silly antics of the wild turkeys that frequented our condo complex. California represents so many things in my life–difficulties as well as joys–and it’s still a bit odd to realize that I don’t live there any more. That is a transition that I imagine I’ll be making for quite a while yet. As always, I will do my best to approach it with as much kindness and gentleness as I can.

So much of what I’ve gone through over the past two years has taught me many lessons, not only in gratitude, but also compassion, patience, empathy, kindness toward others and also toward myself. I have learned to lean on others, to ask for help and support, and to receive graciously with gratitude. I have been intentional in practicing and learning to cultivate what Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron calls the four limitless qualities and Mushim, one of my teachers at the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland refers the “four immeasurables”: lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. As I move along my own eclectic spiritual path, developing and strengthening these capacities provides a good foundation and grounding for me in the midst of all the transitions and change.

I am grateful to be coming to the close of a very good, interesting, and long week. I am blessed to have begun working with a good group of people and am learning to navigate my way through the brave new world outside of the East Bay of California. There are a number of things I miss, and am excited about the new things I have gained. I look forward with gratitude as I move more fully into my what’s next.

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