Lessons in Gratitude

I am grateful this evening for the words of wisdom and inspiration that people have written over the year, decades, centuries, millennia. I keep many quotations scribbled on post-it notes plastered all over the upright flat surfaces on my desk. Many of them are things that have encouraged me as I’ve struggled with understanding what was happening in my life and figuring out how to stand strong in the midst of it all. What’s not plastered on the front of my desktop computer is etched in my memory in bits and pieces. Thank goodness for search engines that only require that you know the first few words of a quote and can find it for you. Words of inspiration by writers, spiritual teachers, religious figures all kinds of people have stuck with me and strengthened my mind, heart, and spirit.

Tonight I have no particular wisdom to share; this has been a fairly typical Saturday for me these days. I packed and organized and cleaned and threw some stuff away. Tomorrow I will get up and do more of the same. I have to keep at it until everything is done, and everything is a lot.

So instead of sharing my own particular brand of wisdom as I have done on so many nights before, I will share someone else’s wisdom that stands out a top my desktop computer offering inspiration to me whenever I take the time to read it. It’s the piece from Marianne Williamson’s “A Return to Love.” It has been quoted and shared many, many times, my guess is because it resonates with so many people.

I am grateful for the words of inspiration that  keep me moving forward in the midst of challenges. Marianne Williamson’s words serve as a reminder to me of who I am and how I am meant to show up in the world. I might not know the particulars of how I am meant to “manifest the glory of God” within me, but I do know that it’s my job to show up, as best I can, willing to be pointed toward the work I need to be doing in the world empowered by the Spirit to do great things.  My “what’s next” awaits me, and I am grateful.

Well we’ve reached another new hundred mark for the blog this evening. For 400 days in the midst of struggle and drama and wild rides on the mechanical bull of life I have managed each day to find something to be grateful for. Some days when I was particularly depressed or sad or angry, the exercise of making myself sit down and bring the force of will to the process of searching through the events of the day to uncover things for which I could express gratitude allowed me to redeem the day. There have been other days when all around me I experienced the good that’s in the world, I smiled and laughed at something, I marveled in the beauty of nature–everywhere I looked I saw reasons to be thankful to be alive. Gratitude has kept me firmly anchored in the positive, even on the toughest days.

I am tired, grateful to be at the end of a week with insufficient sleep. In spite of fatigue over the course of the week, it has been a relatively good one in terms of my time at work. I am grateful for the work I’m doing as a contract consultant with a nonprofit organization. It is not the full-time, benefited job I’ve been seeking for a while now, and it’s not at all the type of work I’ve done over the 25-plus years of my career. But it has offered me an opportunity to use my brain, to offer my skills in supporting the good work of others. For a long time I didn’t understand much of what I was doing–the industry is very different from the field where I’ve worked, and it has a completely different language than I’m accustomed to hearing and speaking. Nevertheless, I’ve slowly come to grasp little pieces of what I am doing and feel a little more competent than I did when I first started working with this organization six months ago. That has been a very good thing.

This has also been a long week spent waiting on some news that hasn’t come yet. It has been difficult at times this week to be in the waiting place, but at other times I’ve paid it little attention, preferring to focus on what was right in front of me in the moment rather than fretting about what I have or haven’t heard. “Time is too slow for those who wait…” And indeed it has been slow. But I’ve never noticed that fretting over anything ever made it better, so better not to fret, eh? So on we go to the weekend when I hope to get a little more sleep and a lot more accomplished. I still have way too much junk to get organized and not many weekends left (2) to get it together. Somehow or another I’ll get it all done.

One final bit of simple gratitude for this evening: my son got his car started. This is really good news as his car has not been operational for about a year. He is excited about getting it back up and running again for the freedom he will gain once it is. I am happy for him and grateful that his car is being restored to him and he can move on to other things he’s been hindered from doing for lack his own reliable transportation. Having a functioning car is a blessing I don’t take for granted, particularly as I’ve seen him and others without a car have to figure out how to get around to work and the store and myriad other places.

My apologies if my 400th blog is not my best writing. I’m hoping to rest up this weekend, and perhaps find some time for myself in the days ahead to give myself a little break from some of the stress of the last several months. I’ll have to see what I can come up with. In the meantime, I’ll continue to stay the course as best I can, anchored by grace and gratitude.

Today has been one of those days…another one. It wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t wonderful. It was just a day. And I have another four hours before I can take my rest. I miscalculated and have one more day on pick up from the train duty. I woke tired and somewhat emotional and spent the morning packing boxes and moving piles around. Regardless of how I might be feeling emotionally at any given time, the work still has to be done. In the midst of the morning my friend Pat called just to “hear my voice” to determine for herself how I was doing. I was hard pressed to sound positive, but I realized that she didn’t call for me to entertain her or help her feel better; she called to let me know that she is thinking about and praying for me. It is reassuring to know that’s the case, and I know Pat is not alone in offering prayers and well-wishes. There are others–my siblings, my small circle of friends, and others–who are aware of my life challenges are supportive in a variety of ways. I am grateful to each of them for their encouragement and assistance. It is sometimes all that sustains me when I hit low points as I have throughout these past months.

Some days, though, like today, I wake early in the morning with my heart on fire with adrenaline, my sleep disturbed and my mind whirling with anxiety. I spend the early part of the day calming myself, talking to myself, willing myself to keep moving, doing anything that advances the objective of packing up and getting ready to move. Today has been one of those difficult days–the weight of the challenges facing me is pressing in and I find myself working hard to think, feel, or say anything positive. To my credit I’ve managed it pretty well today. In spite of the emotional struggle I smiled and even chuckled at a thing or two over the course of the day. I am grateful for that, and as is true with so many things these days, I do not take that for granted.

I am in a waiting space in which very little is known or settled in my life. But where there are things I do know, it is important for me to acknowledge them. This morning as I wrote in my journal I decided to write a list of things I know as a way to remind myself that, while there are so many unknowns in my life, there are things that I know for sure. Writing those things down seemed important today, and I’m glad I did it. The things I “know” fell into similar categories as things I’m grateful for–the love of family and friends and the positive affirmations from people around me, and even a few things I know about myself, about who I am as a person regardless of what my current circumstances might suggest.

I have many times expressed gratitude for perseverance, persistence, and resilience. Tonight I am counting on the gift of resilience to help me bounce back from the low energy of today to enjoy a more positive, optimistic day tomorrow. In the meantime, I am grateful that even on the hard days the exercise of expressing gratitude allows me to focus on and contemplate what’s good. That practice is what carries me through and deposits me in a better place. Mama said there’ll be days like this, and Mama was right. But these days have only twenty-four hours in them just like any other, and they pass away never to return. Tomorrow is a new day, with brand new grace, opportunities to learn, grow, love, and be thankful. And so I shall.

Today has been a relatively good day, though I find myself thoroughly exhausted. Last night I picked my son up at the train at around 12:45 a.m. He works until 11:30 p.m. and has to catch a bus to the train to get across the Bay to the station where I come to pick him up. There’s no good transportation from the station to where we live, so I am on call for pick up duty. This was not pretty because by the time we got home and I climbed into bed it was around 1:15. My alarm started ringing at 6 a.m. You can see the challenge this schedule presents. And unfortunately, this is likely to be the schedule for the next several days. Tonight I conked out on the sofa with my dinner tray sitting on my lap. I’d finished eating and nodded off right there. I will probably take a nap before I head out to pick him up tonight–I’m not sure I could stay awake until 12:30 even if I wanted to. So tonight I am going to offer a few simple gratitudes before going off to take my nap.

I am grateful for the times when I am truly living in the moment. I am focused on what is immediately in front of me, not fretting over all that I did or didn’t do in the past or freaking out about all the things that could happen in the future. Yes, I have things I wish I had done or said differently, times I’d behaved differently, but that was then and I already did what I did, said what I said, and acted how I acted. It’s a done deal. And while I have a number of thingsI need to do and have happen on my behalf in the days and weeks ahead, there’s little I can do in this moment except to continue to plan and prepare as best I can without being deeply attached to the outcome. Things can change in the blink of an eye, throwing all that careful planning and preparation completely out of whack. So it is useless and in fact quite harmful to expend a lot of energy fretting about what’s going to happen next week, when I really should have my attention and energy on what’s in front of me at the moment. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

This all sounds well and good, but it is a lot of work and I’d say I’m only moderately successful at achieving this state of enlightenment. I have moments of freak out nearly every day; it’s not about not having them, it’s about knowing how to handle it when you do have them. I talked about this a bit in yesterday’s blog when I wrote about the drill sergeant and the teacher–the motivator and the nurturer. Whatever comes up in the moment, I try to work with it–breathe through it, assure myself that I am not going to die and that everything in fact is going to be alright, calm myself down, and then get on with whatever I was doing when the freakout first interrupted the orderly flow of life.  I am not an expert at it, but it is a muscle I plan to keep exercising until it gets well-defined and strong. And given some of the questions I am facing about my future I’ll have plenty of opportunity to exercise. Still, I am grateful for the moments of calm that I have in the midst of the craziness. In those moments I remember that life is good, it is sweet, and there is much to be grateful for.

Whew, it’s been long day, and even at nearly 11 p.m. it ain’t over yet. I am pleased to say that I pressed on and pushed myself to get some work done today. Every hour counts when you’re up against a deadline. Sometimes keeping myself moving and not sagging onto the sofa wondering how I was going to get everything done was a major accomplishment in and of itself. I had to remind myself that I didn’t have to get everything done today, just some things. I tend to forget that when overwhelm sets in. I had to remind myself to breathe several times over the course of the day, not allowing myself to dissolve into tears, but also acknowledging what I was feeling. It’s a delicate balance to strike–in some ways I have to be a drill sergeant, pushing myself to keep those feet moving, keep pushing, keep working to meet the objective. On the other hand, drill sergeants don’t tolerate tears particularly well (at least that’s what I’ve heard), so I have to be a patient, nurturing teacher, encouraging myself not to be sad or discouraged but to dry my eyes, blow my nose, take a deep breath and get back to it. It takes all the various parts of myself to keep me moving forward. I am grateful to have been able to get a fair amount done today, though from the disastrous look of the downstairs of my condo you wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell.

When I am juggling the types and number of things I’m juggling it is amazing that, for the most part, everything stays up in the air rather than crashing down around me. Of course, periodically I miss things or drop them or they collide with one another, but for the most part I am managing. I have long suffered from a bit of scatterbrainedness (now they call it ADD…) but under some of the stresses I’ve been under lately, plus the documented effects of menopause on memory, and other contributing factors, I’ve become even more scatterbrained in the past few months. Yesterday I was sitting in the car with my son waiting to go into a restaurant where we were joining friends for dinner. I looked over at him and suddenly experienced that odd sense that something was not quite right.

Nevermind that I had driven my son to catch the train nearly every day in the last week, and that every day he hugs me goodbye. It took me a week to notice that his facial hair was gone (and I really liked his facial hair, so you’d think I’d have noticed it.) This lets me know that I need to create some time for myself to breathe and return to some semblance of mindfulness, as best I can. Yes, I have a lot going on; but somehow in the midst of it all I need to find time to slow my mind down and take in what’s going on around me. It’s definitely something worth working on as the wild and wooly weeks ahead unfold.

I’ve been living on the edge, dancing with uncertainty, riding the mechanical bull of life in the midst of chaos with a hint of murkiness thrown in for good measure. Things are coming to a head and I am holding on for dear life trying to keep my seat until the buzzer sounds and I can leap off the crazy thing. In the meantime, I plan on doing whatever I need to do to remain calm, as focused as possible (given the scatterbrainedness), and doggedly determined to keep myself moving.

So we shall see how the week unfolds. I am grateful to be standing strong (even when I’m sniffling and the drill sergeant starts yelling) and will do so even among the pressures of the coming week. A lot of things are happening so I can’t complain that my life is in any way dull. But gratitude and grace will anchor me in the here and now this week, so I need not worry or be overly anxious or sad. I might not know all the details of the plan, but I’m pretty sure there is one. So I’ll gratefully await the unfolding. Stay tuned!

Tonight I am grateful again for the basics–food to eat, a safe, warm, place to live, a relatively healthy, strong body and reasonably sound mind, clothing that covers my body and shoes on my feet. I am also grateful of things that are luxuries in many places: cable television, wireless home internet and computers to use it with, several musical instruments, paintings and prints, various electronics, and numerous other things that aren’t necessities, but make life more enjoyable and fun. While I am grateful to have the use of these things, I am starting to believe there could be such a thing as too much of a good thing. I am aware, as I have been sorting and dejunking and packing in preparation to move, how much stuff I have, some of which definitely needs to go. My daughter accused me of not letting go of things, and she’s probably right. I mean what do I need with all the stuffed animals and beanie babies she’s given me over the years? Ahem.

Suffering, according to some Buddhist teaching, springs in part from clinging and attachments to all kinds of things–people, possessions, states of being. As I look at all the stuff I have (and it’s a whole lot less than I used to have), I find myself wondering just what I should keep and what I should let go of. Part of the challenge for me right now is that I don’t have time to really go through stuff and decide what it’s time to get rid of–I have way more stuff than I have tie at this point. So wherever I go next I am guaranteed to carry with me a bunch of stuff that I don’t need or use anymore simply because I don’t have time to deal with it. And I’m not likely to be settled in even a quasi-permanent home any time in the foreseeable future. So as often happens to people when they move, I am likely to haul junk I don’t want or need with me to the next place I go.

Every once in a while I have the radical thought of getting rid of just about all the stuff I still have. There’s so much that I could offload. When I think of what I really need to have around me to make my life comfortable and enjoyable it’s probably a lot less than I think. I remember repacking a box a few months ago that contained a number of games and other “fun” items–jigsaw puzzles and such. Some of those games I haven’t played in years and yet I kept them. I remember tearfully telling my daughter at the time when she asked me why I was keeping them that they represented hope for me that someday I’d get back to a place in my life when I could play the games with people and have fun and good times. I knew it was probably silly to keep them, but at that moment to have gotten rid of them would have felt like giving up the hope. I will probably eventually give most of the games away, but that was not the day and neither is this one.

I still have a lot to figure out about all this, but I won’t be figuring that all out now. I’ll downsize by getting rid of yet more stuff, but for now the priority is to pack up what I have understanding that I’ll have more sorting, dejunking, and downsizing to do when I get to my next place. I will no doubt be glad to have some of my “stuff” at my new place, wherever that ends up being. Wherever I live next, being in a new place is going to be yet another change in the long series of changes over the last 18 months or so. Having some familiar stuff around me will, I hope, help make that transition a little bit smoother. And given how bumpy things have been, smooth sounds really good. I am grateful to have developed the capacity to surf the waves that sometimes come crashing down, and will likewise be grateful for more tranquil waters ahead. May it be so!