Lessons in Gratitude Day 372

Posted on July 20, 2012 by mtchamblee

I’m grateful this evening for hanging out with my sister Ruth and her family. After a lovely late supper, we retired to the family where I was treated to watching the television show, “Wipeout.” I haven’t laughed this hard in months. I would never have watched this show if it I weren’t here–I always thought it looked “stupid” which of course it is. But apparently it was just the kind of stupid I needed, because I raised enough endorphins to last me through at least the next 24 hours.

I am likewise grateful for safe travels, which I rarely take for granted. I was up at 5:15, out of the house by 6:20 and in the air at 10 a.m. (got to the airport way too early and sat around playing Words with Friends). By the time we got home from the airport and had dinner, it was after 9 p.m. (6 p.m. West Coast time). My desire is to quickly get myself on East Coast time, so I’ll be retiring shortly. Been a long day.

After a year’s worth of daily blog writing, I am contemplating what’s next for my writing (like I need a what’s next. At this moment, I have no idea; but tonight is not the time to contemplate it. This weekend while I’m out visiting with family will be a good time to relax and refresh a little bit before heading back West to a lot of working and decision-making. And then the big road trip to Seattle. For now, I’m going to enjoy being in the moment(s) while I’m out here. Hey, maybe we’ll watch “Wipeout” one more time so I can rev up the laugh engines one more time. Til then, the gratitude engines will have to keep me going.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 371

Posted on July 19, 2012 by mtchamblee

I am getting ready to travel. I am not really a relaxed, easy traveler, particularly when it involves flying across the country (though I am by no means a white knuckle traveler either.) But when you live at one edge of the country, getting to many places in the center or to the other edge requires it. I am going to the other edge–Virginia to be exact, to the greater Washington DC metropolitan area. I am on a psuedo secret mission the outcome of which I reveal in due course.

Tonight I’ve been packing, crossing things off my to-do list, printing out my boarding pass and trying to relax so I can get to sleep soon. Five a.m. will be here before I know it. I want to give myself enough time to write in my journal and be able to putter around a little bit before heading to the airport. My flight isn’t until 9:45 in the morning, but I’ll leave the house around 6:15 or so to give myself plenty of time to get there, catch the shuttle from the car park to the terminal, go through security and then, time permitting, get some breakfast before boarding the five hour flight to Virginia. So now I want to wind down and get ready to take my rest.

I am grateful this evening for the gift of words and language, specifically tonight, I am grateful for spiritual expression often referred to as prayer. I pray constantly, I can’t seem to help it and I don’t really try to help it. It is completely natural and effortless to me, as instantaneous as thought. But this morning, I took a slightly different direction with my praying. Sometimes I pray with intention, a specific prayer like the night prayer I’ve shared in previous blogs (Google, “Lord It Is Night” and you’ll find it.) I recite it a lot, though I haven’t memorized it yet. It is a good prayer as I wind down to go to sleep; I’ll probably say it tonight. This morning, though, I found myself wanting a morning prayer, and rather than Google, “Lord it is morning,” or return to my childhood “Morning Offering,” which has elements I don’t particularly ascribe to any more, I decided to write my own prayer.

After a moment of wondering to myself “Can I do that–write my own prayer?” I quickly chided myself, “Of course I can, I make up my own prayers all the time–every day in fact. But I guess when you commit something to paper or type it into your computer, it becomes more real somehow, more fixed. When you post it in your blog, I suppose it’s even more “out there.” That’s alright with me. I’m not trying to have my prayer inducted into a prayer hall of fame or included in a prayer book or anything else. It is to provide me with another means of expression, of communion between myself and One who is greater than I yet is also a part of me. So this morning I wrote a morning prayer in my journal. It is as yet unrefined, but that’s alright too. I offer it here as a gift of sorts in the same spirit in which I offer encouragement to each person reading this blog to consider what they are grateful for in their lives. I hope you find meaning in these words each night and in my Morning Prayer.

Good morning, God. It is a new day.
Day time is full of activity and action;
But in the early morning, let me turn to you
while it is yet still.
Let me offer this day and all it brings–
the work that I do, the people I encounter,
the triumphs and the challenges–for the good of all beings
and to honor you.
Let the actions of my hands, the thoughts of my mind,
the meditation of my heart, and the song of my spirit be pleasing to you
and to all those around me.
In the midst of the busy-ness, let me feel myself enveloped by peace and calm.
Let me experience moments of beauty and gratitude
until the night time comes and it’s time to take my rest and reflect
on the day just past.
Keep my heart and mind in perfect peace.
In your many names, I pray. Amen and let it be so!

© Marquita T. Chamblee, 2012

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 370

Posted on July 18, 2012 by mtchamblee

I am grateful. It has been a tiring day–I have walked through a fairly busy mid-week, mid-July day and am mildly exhausted. It has been a happy day–after nearly a year my son has been able to regain something he’d lost that was important to him, that will significantly improve his life.  It has been an expensive day–I had to pay for costly but necessary repairs to my and my daughter’s cars. But overall it has been a good day. I enjoyed breakfast with my good friend Mary, had a nice long chat with my son, put in a few hours of hard, but very gratifying work at the pantry, and am enjoying a relatively quiet evening. I am grateful.

Lately I’ve been receiving many messages from the Universe about gratitude. Interestingly, I hear it a lot from people at the food pantry–people who for a variety of reasons need food aid, many of whom are homeless. Today I carried the bags of groceries out to the cars of a number of clients who were physically unable to lift and carry the heavy bags to their vehicles or the bus stop. This is part of my regular work at the pantry and often quite enjoyable. As we walk along, they often tell me things about their lives–their struggles and challenges, yes. But many also speak of gratitude, of being blessed, of thankfulness for their lives. I assisted an older woman today who, as we walked slowly along, explained to me that she’d had a stroke a number of years ago that left her weak on her right side. She explained that’s why she walked so slowly. I told her I thought she moved pretty well considering what she’d been through. “Oh yes, I’m blessed.” She responded, “I’m just grateful to be here. I’m glad to be alive and well!”

I can’t adequately describe to you what it means to me to work at the food pantry each week. It has never been about wanting to feel good about myself by doing good deeds out in the community; I first started volunteering at the pantry because I needed something, to lift myself out of what would have been deep depression at all that had befallen me in the first part of 2011. I needed to have a reason to get out of my house and do something that would take me out of myself while also doing good work. I didn’t expect that I would fall in love with the place–with the work, my fellow volunteers, the clients we serve each week. They are all familiar and welcome to me and I find that, no matter what else is going on in my life, I look forward to my Wednesdays at the pantry more than just about anything else in my week. The feeling for me is sort of like the theme from the old television show, “Cheers.” It’s about being someplace, “where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.” I guess perhaps in that sense it is an ego thing for me. I love the work and I love the people and I know that when I walk in the door, people are as glad to see me as I am to see them.

Next week I am going for a job interview out of state, presenting the very real possibility that I will leave California and be unable (for the foreseeable future at least) to volunteer with the Wednesday crew at the Berkeley Food Pantry. I felt a little wistful about that today as I allowed myself to consider that possibility. The Wednesday crew have been supporters and cheerleaders for me as I’ve looked for work, asking regularly how things are going and offering suggestions and words of encouragement. The pantry has been a refuge of sorts for me as I’ve healed from the grief and loss of job, home, and significant relationship. I have become a more understanding, compassionate, and grateful person over the past year due in large part to the work I’ve done at the pantry. Wherever my “what’s next” takes me, if it’s away from my current home in the East Bay of Northern California, I hope I can find a place that does for me and I can do for others what being at the pantry has done for me. While I know I won’t be able to replicate it (how can I replicate my coworker Diane?) I can only hope to find the elements there that I have here. While it would be fabulous to find those qualities in the paid work I do for my next “job,” if I can find it for free doing volunteer work, I’ll take it and be exceedingly grateful.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 369

Posted on July 17, 2012 by mtchamblee

Tonight I confess that I am having a hard time sitting still long enough to write. What I’d really like, after having had a few late nights over the past few days, is to go to bed. But I have a bit more I need to do before I can take my rest.

I have started tonight’s blog about a half dozen times so far. I haven’t managed to land on a theme I can expound upon. My tired brain holds a mish-mash of thoughts that I can’t seem to assemble into any form of coherence. This has happened before, of course. I suppose it could be considered writer’s block or some other force that renders relatively creative people temporarily incapable of producing anything whatsoever. I fear this evening finds me in that state.

I am grateful for many things this evening, in spite of my relative inability to craft words into sentences, string sentences together into paragraphs and paragraphs into a completed product. I am grateful for the food sitting comfortably in my stomach and the knowledge that I need only get up and go downstairs to the kitchen should I get hungry and want more. I have had moments over the past months when I didn’t have very much in the fridge or freezer or pantry, but I always had something I could eat and have never run out of food altogether to the point of not knowing when or what I might eat next. How fortunate I am considering how many people in this country–probably right here in this city–don’t have enough to eat. I see it every week that I volunteer at the Berkeley Food Pantry: people for whom those two bags of groceries and bread and fresh produce is a godsend.

I am grateful for the strength that keeps me going, the sheer will and determination that keeps me moving forward when I want to sit down and quit. It is the same strength that I see in various members of my family, who grit their teeth, put their head down and push through the obstacles that would hinder them on their journey. Perseverance, strength of will, and persistence. Resilience to bounce back after a fall and keep going. These are not hard-edged qualities; it is quite possible to possess gentleness of spirit and unyielding determination. As I picture in my mind’s eye the faces of my siblings, of their children, of my children I see such strength manifested in myriad ways as individual as they are, and yet as familiar to me as my own. Oh yes, we are family and we spring from strong roots. I am grateful to be among a group of such wonderful, powerful people.

I am in prayer and hope that calmer days are ahead–I seem to live on the edge of chaos and tumult a great deal of the time. And while I am grateful to be exercising the muscles of perseverance, of flexibility and adaptability to rapidly changing conditions, resilience, and the many other qualities whose virtues I extolled earlier, I would be content  to rest those muscles for a bit. Until then I will take each moment as it presents itself, as best I can, remembering to be compassionate, patient, and kind to myself in the process.

Tonight I am listening to the mourning dove call. Among all the evensongs that are alive tonight, her mournful call is new. I have heard mourning doves often, but this is the first time I can remember hearing one out here. I love the night sounds. Turkeys calling to one another as they prepare to roost for the night, the shrill last trilling calls of the juncos, the rhythmic chirping of crickets and other night insects. I think I will enjoy them for a few moments longer then I will go take my rest. I know I said I have work to do, and I do. But it will have to keep until tomorrow. Tonight, I’m going to rest.

My apologies for my scattered thoughts this evening. I can promise to attempt to do better tomorrow, but cannot guarantee the results. I will meet you here, nonetheless, and together we can perhaps share a moment of gratitude together.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 368

Posted on July 16, 2012 by mtchamblee

Whew, another long, good day. I am starting this blog over an hour later than usual, which has happened the past few nights. While this is not a pattern I want to consistently repeat, it is what it is and I’ll make the best of it.  I might not be terribly pithy or deep tonight, but I hope I’ll be excused.

It seemed like just yesterday I was lamenting that it was mid-June already, wondering what had happened to May. And now here it is mid-July. Alas, time waits for no one. I can’t decide if I think the supersonic fleeting of time is a good or bad thing, so I can’t quite be grateful for it, at least not yet! The one good thing I can say for sure is that with the rapid passage of time I am hurtling ever more quickly toward my “what’s next,” even though I still don’t quite know what my “what’s next” is just yet. One way or another, something is going to happen. I don’t mean to sound all cryptic about it and will reveal more over the next few weeks. But some changes are coming soon, it’s simply a matter of degrees–what’s going to change and by how much?

One change I know for sure is that my daughter, who will be starting her graduate school career in a few short weeks, will be living farther away from me than a one hour drive. For the first time in her life she’ll be living on her own, while I–at least at the moment–am no closer than a 14 hour drive or a two hour plane ride. This is definitely going to take some getting used to, for both of us. Of my two children, my daughter was the shy one; as a toddler and young child she rarely strayed far away from me, preferring to peer at the world from just behind my leg. There have been phases when we were relatively inseparable–largely because she wouldn’t let go of my leg–and then others when we struggled mightily to get along. The struggle mightily phase didn’t last overly long, fortunately for both of us, and our relationship has deepened as Michal has matured. When she returns next week from St. Louis where she’s spent the past few weeks with her father, she’ll be home only a few days before she and I take our road trip to Seattle, to her new school and her new life.

Life is full of transitions; and this appears to be a transitory time for my little family. Like me, my son is still seeking his “what’s next.” In the meantime, he’s likely to be moving as well, and though he’ll stay here in the Bay area, he won’t be living with me any longer. This too will require some adjustment on my part, but I’ve no doubt I’ll make the best of it I can. Then it’ll be just me and the dog. She at least seems relatively content to go with the flow in her in-the-moment, doglike way so I’m hopeful she’ll weather her next transition relatively well.

I find I am measuring these days with my kids as precious times I won’t have in this way for too much longer. It is of course one of the inevitabilities of life–kids grow up and move away, it’s what they do. Heck, it’s what I and all my siblings did. And now it is my turn to do as my mother had to do each time one of us left home: let go. I realize that I am swiftly approaching the time I knew was coming way back in 1996 when I wrote these words in a song called “Letting Go:”

I watch my children and I see how fast they grow.
Each day brings me closer to the time I’ve gotta let ’em go.
But until then I hug them and I bless them and I love them and I let them know
That I’ll hold on tight and won’t let go.
Cause people come in our lives and for a while they stay,
But they’re not ours to keep, we let ’em go, we give them away.
So we’ve gotta make the best we can of each and every day,
Cause all too soon we know we’ll face another time of letting go.
(Words and music by M. T. Chamblee, © 1996)

Yep, time to let go. Oh perhaps not completely, but definitely lengthening the ties that bind. There’s a line from a James Taylor song that says, “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time…” It seems to me that as long as it’s flying by so quickly, I might as well take the time to try to enjoy it, as fleeting as it is. I’m grateful for these days, as unsettled and uncertain as they are. After all, we really only have this moment until we have the next one, so we might as well enjoy it. As James goes on to say in the song, “The Secret O’ Life:” “But since we’re on our way down, we might as well enjoy the ride.” Sounds like good advice to me.

© M. T. Chamblee, 2012

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 367

Posted on July 15, 2012 by mtchamblee

Sometimes I have so many things going on at the same time that I can hardly get anything done. I bounce around like ricochet rabbit from one thing to the next. It can be a little tiring and a bit frustrating when at the end of the day I am giving an account of myself and my activities to one of my harsher critics and hard-to-please taskmasters: me. Today has indeed been one of those days. I can say as I account for the various things I worked on over the course of the day that I did manage to accomplish some things; but I am feeling a sense of dissatisfaction at the end of this day. But here’s the good news: today is not yet over. It’s not so much about scrambling around to do yet more stuff so I can feel like I got something worthwhile done. It really is much more about how I choose to end this day. What am I going to do with this cranky disgruntlement? I’m going to do what I do every night around this time: offer thanks.

Gratitude is not just about feeling good or about doing things that ensure you’ll feel good later. As someone said to me recently, “It’s easy to be grateful when things are going well.” The corollary to that is, of course, that it takes a bit more effort to be truly grateful when things are difficult and challenging. I have certainly learned that over the course of these past months. But I remain grateful and willing to put in the work on remaining so, even in the midst of struggle and stress and chaos. It is about choice. So the first expression of gratitude is being grateful for what I got done today. When I could have sat around in bummed-out immobilization, I managed to get myself up and active–packing some boxes and taking them to the storage unit, reorganizing the stuff in the unit so that it was arranged a bit more securely (a few boxes had toppled since I’d last been in there), and accomplished other tasks in preparation for my someday relocation. I also did a little cleaning, prepared some application materials and other documents I had to complete, along with a few other odds and ends. So in spite of my protestations to the contrary, it has been a reasonably productive day.

Sometimes when one looks at the totality of what needs to be done, it can be overwhelming and progress can seem slow. It’s easy to overlook the fact that any action that moves you in the direction of your goal is to be appreciated rather than judged because it’s not moving you there fast enough. As I move forward with all that I have to do over the next month or so it’s important for me to encourage myself as best I can. It’s kind of like the line from “Finding Nemo” when the character Dory says, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…” At one point that was a mantra of mine, “just keep swimming,” even when everything around you is unfamiliar and scary, and you want to just stop and give up…just keep swimming, or in my case, just keep putting one foot in front of the other on those days when I’m struggling. If I just keep moving I eventually get to a place where I hit my stride and make more rapid progress. One key is for me to be much more patient with myself. I want everything to happen right now and get hard on myself when things aren’t happening fast enough. Now more than ever I have to be patient, compassionate, kind, and gentle with myself.

I am grateful for the progress I made on various projects today. Do I still have a lot of things to get done? Yes. But I have fewer things to do than I did when I woke this morning. This reminds me of the line from the Night Prayer I post in this blog from time to time:

“It is night after a long day. What has been done has been done; what has not been done has not been done; let it be.”

That’s pretty good advice. Let it be. Tonight I am going to accept with gratitude the work that I did today and let it be. I ran across this quote from Eckhart Tolle that now graces my wall of post-it note encouragements: “Sometimes letting go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.” How right that is. So I am exercising my power and letting go.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 366/1

Posted on July 14, 2012 by mtchamblee

I am grateful for a new day. This morning when I woke (before the alarm as usual) the first words I wrote in my journal were, “Woke this morning–thank you God, lol. I am grateful to be alive, relatively well/able bodied to be able to greet the morning with my writing practice.” (And yes, I sometimes write “lol” in my journal.) I realized that I often begin my journal with “I woke this morning before the alarm,” or “I woke this morning feeling adrenalized and anxious” or something along those lines. I sometimes describe my mental and emotional state upon waking, sometimes with humor, often without it. I haven’t set rules for myself when it comes to writing in my journal. Unlike this blog, it doesn’t have a particular theme, and also unlike this blog I write cranky, sad, depressed, irritable, foul-tempered and mouthed, or any other types of things I want to write. But I find that I am nonetheless somewhat careful about what I write in my journal even though no one but me will read it. As I wrote this morning,

“Even though this journal is private to only me, versus my blog which is totally public, I still want to practice positivity as much as I can (“right” speech?) I am mindful that I need a place to express my very real (feeling at least) emotions–anger, sadness and depression, grief, fears and anxiety, etc. This journal is a place to be able to say things that I have no other outlet for, where I don’t have to watch my words.”

Nevertheless I do watch my words in a sense, and that’s okay. It’s a balance. On the one hand it’s about expressing all that I need to communicate in a “safe” place, where what I say can’t disturb or harm others. On the other is my desire to channel all the “negative” voices in my head, the sometimes mean things I say to myself, into more positive messages that align more with where I want to be and how I want to feel. So far, it’s working for me.

So this morning when I woke up and wrote the words, “woke this morning–thank you God” I had to smile. In those first few moments of wakefulness I recognized with great appreciation that I did indeed wake this morning. With very little effort and no pain, I sat up, swung my fully-functioning legs over to put my feet on the floor, padded across the carpet next door to the bathroom, where let’s just say all systems were functioning properly, padded back to my room, climbed back into bed propped up on my study pillow with journal, pen and lapdesk to write. In the span of about 10 minutes I encountered a minimum of a half dozen things to be grateful for, and I realized it the moment I wrote, “Woke this morning…” I have no idea what I was going to write, but I stopped after those three words and realized what a blessing it is simply to wake in the morning with a fresh set of hours ahead of me to do with what I pleased. And I was so very grateful.

I went on to write some pretty deep things this morning, exposing some previously unexamined ideas I’d harboring toward myself that were less than helpful. Journal time this morning provided my with some very interesting clues about things I need to work on in my life.  The process of writing in the morning, which I began doing back in early February, and blogging in the evenings is moving me toward the kind of clarity I’ve been asking the Universe for. And though I’m far from knowing the answers to the questions I have about “what’s next,” I’m learning to live the questions, as Rilke says. So I’ll keep up the writing, keep asking the questions, keep seeking clarity, keep on keeping on and of course continue to deepen my practice of gratitude.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
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Lessons in Gratitude, Day 365

Posted on July 13, 2012 by mtchamblee

I made it! I really wasn’t trying to, didn’t set out to do it, but here I am–on the 365th day of expressing gratitude. I posted the first Lessons in Gratitude blog on June 30, 2011, writing for 227 straight days until February 12 when I took a break. As I wrote at the time,

“I had finally hit a wall that I couldn’t seem to climb over, walk around or tunnel under. I’d had writers block quite a few times in the previous 227 days, and, in the days leading up to my hiatus on February 12, the blocks had begin building themselves into the wall I hit that day.”

I took a week off and resumed with LIG Day 228 on February 19 and took the next week off, writing day 229 on February 26. I had begun to realize the importance that writing this blog had taken on in my life only once I had stopped writing it. As I wrote in LIG day 229,

“A funny thing happened during my hiatus from writing my daily gratitude blog–I lost some of the power that had come from focusing each day on one or more blessings I am grateful for. I still expressed gratitude in some form many times a day; but I definitely lost something when I fell out of the habit of taking this time of deliberate focus on gratitude. It’s going to take me some effort to reestablish the momentum I’d gained from writing every day for  nearly eight months. I imagine that the wall I hit a few weeks ago when I’d written the last blog before my hiatus will still pop up in front of me from time to time. And, as I did so many times on those days, I’ll push through and find a way to say what I am grateful for that day. Right now I am simply grateful to be back thinking and writing about gratitude.”

After that two week span between February 12 and the 26, I went back to consistently writing every day. And in these 136 days–four and a half months–I’ve still had days when I’ve struggled through emotional lows when finding any words to express gratitude about anything was excruciatingly difficult, and yet I managed it. Because the one thing that has been consistent and clear in my understanding of this unfolding process is that there is always something to be grateful for; there is never not a time, when I cannot find something for which I am truly grateful. It could be that I’m speaking for solely for myself here, but I doubt it somehow. I believe that if we’re willing to look for even the tiniest of blessings, we’ll find it. Some of us have no trouble whatsoever finding something to complain or be negative about. If you’re going to expend the energy to search through your life looking for something, why not look for something good? And if you’re going to take the time to express your thoughts about what you’ve found as you’ve examined your life, why not speak, write, sing, mime, etc. about the good things you’ve uncovered in your exploration rather than glorifying and expounding on the negatives?

I have a reasonably grounded, laid back, relatively unexcitable temperament. No one will likely ever accuse me of being a “Little Mary Sunshine,” as one who gushes about how everything is wonderful in a squeaky, Pollyanna, isn’t life great kind of way. A friend gave me a T-shirt with a line drawing of a glass with liquid in it and a caption reading, “Half Full.” At the time she bought it for me it was as an expression of optimism that I would perhaps someday see the glass as half full. But lately my intentional focus on gratitude has had unanticipated side effects–I’ve now begun to suspect that indeed the glass might be moving in the general direction of half to slightly more than half full. Hmmmm. I can now add this improved sense of optimism to the growing list of benefits to the practice of gratitude.

Okay so perhaps I’m writing this a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but the truth of the matter is that my attitude has improved as I’ve focused on gratitude, although those living with me might differ with my self-assessment.  As I think about where I could be emotionally, mentally, spiritually, intellectually, even physically had I not been practicing gratitude, it gives me pause. Because as much as I struggle here and there, stressed, depressed and exhausted, I know I am in a much better space than I could be because I practice gratitude.

I’m grateful for this journey of the last year. I have felt at times bruised and battered by the circumstances of life but as a line from the poem Invictus states, “I thank whatever gods may be/For my unconquerable soul.” I’m not sure I would say that my soul is unconquerable, but it has certainly held up pretty well, all things considered. I don’t know if I have another 365 days worth of blog-writing energy. If you had asked me how long I thought I’d write when I started I would not have believed I would write every day for a year. I have a lot more writing I want to do on a lot of subjects related to other personal and professional interests. For the time being though, I’ll keep writing about my gratitude for the many, many wondrous, wonderful things in and around and through my life. I’ll keep inviting you to find some means of expressing your own gratitude in ways consistent with who you are (not everyone wants to write a daily blog.) I look forward to many more days of sharing the gift of gratitude. What are you grateful for today?

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 364

Posted on July 12, 2012 by mtchamblee

Last night I slept with both my windows wide open because even after sunset it was still stuffy and hot in my room. This morning, I paid for it. I was awakened at 5:27 a.m. by the familiar and annoyingly sleep-piercing shriek of the no longer mysterious Dark-eyed Junco.  As I peeked one bleary eye out from under my eyeshade to peer at the clock I cursed the little bird with the big voice and, I am embarrassed to admit, wished all manner of ill thing might befall it if only to silence it for at least 30 more minutes. It was not to be and so I rose, groggy and mildly cranky starting my day roughly a half hour earlier than I’d planned. Now I am laughing at myself, the great lover of nature and natural beauty who wants nature to operate on my time schedule so as not to disturb my beauty rest.

Tonight is supposed to be as cool as last night was hot. I witnessed this for myself having not long ago returned from a nice long walk with Honor. I had a light sweatshirt and jacket on to go out this evening; yesterday it was short sleeved T-shirt. The coolness is a more typical weather pattern for this time of year, often the hottest days of the year are between mid September and mid October before it cools back into the autumn season. For some reason this evening had an autumnal feel to me, the cool breeze whispering through the pines and rustling the dried leaves and yellowed grasses. I had to remind myself that it is July with the “dog days” of August just around the corner. I believe I am about to turn a corner in my life over the next month or so. It could be I’ll have some pretty serious thinking and decision making to do as I ponder my “what’s next.”

It’s an odd space I’m in; I’ve described it before in this blog. What has been increasingly clear to me as the months have passed is that this past year has been a least partly a lesson in living in the moment. That phrase has become so overused as to almost be meaningless, and yet I think it is the best way to describe how I have been living over these months. Now let me be clear, this didn’t come about by choice: most of the things that occurred to cause me to focus on the present moment were deeply painful, unexpected, and shattering experiences. They had me question just about everything I believed in, having shaken my self confidence, my belief in fairness and rightness in the world, and my sense of safety and security. For a long time nothing was focused on the future; everything was about surviving the next hour, the rest of the day, the next day, the day after that. I wasn’t fighting for my physical life–my health early on was the least of my concerns (though later it got a little shaky too…) No, I was fighting for my mental and emotional health and wellbeing and that, quite simply, involved putting one foot in front of the other, moment by moment, whether I wanted to or not. Eventually, those moments turned into hours and those hours into a whole day and sometimes two whole days in a row of feeling good again. I am grateful for each moment my strength of will prevailed, as I slowly gathered myself and proceeded to live my life as best I could.

I have made peace with living in the moment, though to be honest, it is still a somewhat uneasy peace. There’s always the tension between living in the moment, but also living in the “real world” that values planning and preparation and needing to know what comes next. I am living that tension right now, and it can be pretty intense. Nevertheless, I can still manage to find myself smiling ruefully at the moment that I realize that nothing I am doing is going to drown out the noise of the shrieking Junco enough for me to get that precious additional 30 minutes of sleep. I choose constantly what to do in the moment. I could grouse and crank and wish I had a slingshot with which I could fling something at the bird (as if that would make it be quiet), or I could do what I did: smile and shake my head, groan, stretch, and get out of bed. Tonight, however, the windows will be closed up tight.

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Lessons in Gratitude Day 363

Posted on July 11, 2012 by mtchamblee

What a journey this has been, these past 363 blogging days (wonder how long that is in dog days?) I am grateful to be half reclining in front of the fan blowing somewhat less than cool air across me as I write. For the most part I no longer write my blog from my bed–I’ve tried to sit at my desk most nights to write it. There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which is that on some nights when I’m writing I’m so tired that I lean my head back against the wall and nod off. While it is also possible to nod off sitting in my desk chair at my desk (I know, I’ve done that as well), sitting on my comfy bed, leaning against my study pillow, legs stretched out in front of me and laptop balanced on my lap is sometimes just too relaxing and sleep inducing. I have refrained from using my computer while sitting on my bed; all of the popular literature on sleeping tells you not to go to bed with your electronics.

So I’ve made a conscientious effort in the past few months to leave my laptop at my desk. I do, however still spend a little too much time on my phone playing Words with Friends when I should be sleeping and I sometimes distract myself with my audiobook which, depending on the book, is also overly stimulating to my mind. Tonight, however, owing to the heat upstairs, I am sitting in front of the fan that is pointed at my bed. Tomorrow (if the heat breaks as they say it will, I will be back at my desk writing this blog.

I don’t know why I continue to be taken aback by the swift passage of time. I mark my days by certain routine events in my life. Wednesday is the day I volunteer at the Berkeley Food Pantry, and as it is also midweek my experience has been that before I know it it will be Saturday the way the days post Pantry plummet by. This has been a long, good day as Wednesdays often are, and no matter how tired I might be from a couple of hours of hauling bags of groceries and assisting Pantry clients, I almost always find myself grateful and satisfied with the work and the connection to the community. As odd as it sounds and as much as I want to be back working a “regular” day job, I will miss being able to spend those three and a half hours serving the community.

I am grateful as I often am at the close of the day for the unfolding and revealing that happens each day. I wake in a particular state of mind, heart and spirit each morning, often recording these feelings in my morning journal and over the course of the day I pass through myriad states of being. The close of day finds me at my computer mulling over the events of the day gleaning from it various nuggets of gratitude that I in turn write about and share with you. The next day I get up and start it all again. But even though that sounds routine–and I suppose in the strict sense of the word the writing practices I engage in as well as other practices over the course of the day are routine–what is not routine is the unfolding or perhaps it is my noticing and observing as well as participating in the unfolding. Because we cannot know what the next moment might hold, it is ripe with possibilities.

At any moment something could happen that could turn a day on its head–for good or ill. Sometimes in the midst of mundane routinism, something unexpectedly hilarious or touching or startling will happen that makes that moment completely unmundane and extraordinary. Having consciously and intentionally paid attention to the moments of beauty, of wonder, of life unfolding in all its richness each day for the past year has shifted something in me that I don’t have words for yet. It has taken me on a journey that I perhaps would not have undertaken if all the difficulties I experienced last year had not happened. Mind you, this has not been fun and games; the struggle to overcome grief and depression, anger and anxiety has at times felt epic. And I have no notion at the moment of where my path might take me next. What I do know is that focusing in on and expressing gratitude on a daily basis has enriched my life and kept me sane and standing strong. And though sometimes I still fall down, disappoint myself, act cranky and ill-tempered toward people I love, complain (the antithesis of gratitude) and do all other kinds of less-than-wonderful things, being grateful has made me a better human being overall. And as the old folks say, “wouldn’t take nothin’ for my journey.” Thank you for sharing it with me.

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