Lessons in Gratitude

Today the teller at the bank where I do all my high finance asked me, “Has anyone ever told you that you have a beautiful smile? You always seem so happy.” I probably smiled in momentary embarrassed surprise before bumbling through a response that at least ended with “Thank you.” This same teller helped me last week with a transaction and said she’d noticed it then. I replied that it helps when the person one is interacting with, in this case, her, is pleasant and friendly. Then the smile simply reflects back the mood and energy of the other person. Nonetheless I left there, well, smiling.

I am grateful to have received that feedback. Heaven knows I do not feel happy all the time; in fact at times I’ve felt downright awful. But it’s good to know that when I am out in the world, I still manage to smile in my interactions in the world, no matter how I’m feeling. The truth is when I am in the bank or at the grocery store or in any of the many places I find myself over the course of the day, people deserve to get my best, or the best I am capable of at the time. It doesn’t cost me anything to smile at the woman at the bank or speak to the person checking me out at the grocery store or wave to let a driver pull out in front of me (that last one is a toughie.) Kindness doesn’t cost me much. Compassion doesn’t require a lot of effort. Smiling really doesn’t expend a great deal of energy (unless you have to keep it up for hours at a time, which for an introvert like me can require some measure of energy. My mama raised me to be kind to people, to go out of my way to be helpful if I can, to smile and be gracious. And God gave me a great big heart where, even though I periodically do get cranky (my children can attest to this), I try my best to be kind.

I still have a lot of growing to do, but I’m grateful to the woman at the bank for reminding me that I do have the means to touch people’s lives. And can be as simple as a smile. We have the power to touch and transform peoples’ lives. I have known this, but I forget. The old song says, “Try a Little Tenderness,” and it’s true. What would the world be like if we offered lovingkindness–or unlimited friendliness–to everyone we encountered. It isn’t always easy, as it is with the friendly bank teller; sometimes we run into people who are just foul-tempered and mean or worse, abusive. But I believe that by and large many of the people we encounter over the course of a given day are just like us, regular people trying to live their lives as best they can. They are as deserving of a smile, a kind word or gesture, as anyone. So why not offer it to them. The prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi begins with the words, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.” What better way to go through life than be making oneself available to bring something good into someone’s life. And while we don’t do it for what we can get in return, those who give are often blessed to receive something in return, if only the good feeling that comes from truly connecting heart-to-heart with other beings. So as I continue walking this path that is set before me, I plan to keep right on smiling and sending love out to the people I encounter. We’ll see what happens!

It has been another interesting day. I divided most of my time today between three major endeavors. First, I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things. We were out of some essentials, so essentials I went and got. Unfortunately when I had gotten to the store I realized I’d forgotten my list. So when I returned home I realized that there were a number of essentials that I’d forgotten to pick up. This will necessitate another trip to the store, which I will manage later in the week. Grocery shopping on a tight budget is an interesting exercise in creativity. I am grateful for various experiences that have taught me to be resourceful and creative in my approaches to living within limits.

The second thing I did was spend a number of hours poring over position descriptions for jobs I might be interested in pursuing. Out of nearly a dozen positions, only about a quarter of them align relatively well with my background and experience. In addition to reviewing the position descriptions, I spent quite a while studying the institutions and departments where the positions are housed. In a number of cases I had serious concerns about the institutions, about elements of the job, and in some cases about the geographic location of some of the schools. I continue to be pulled between two competing thoughts: (1) a job is a job and you need income so go after and take whatever you can get, and (2) you studied hard, worked hard to achieve a certain level of performance, and you have considerable experience. So you can’t take a job that doesn’t take advantage of your skills or pay you even close to what you’re worth. Such are the challenges of being jobless and over 50. There’s a lesson in gratitude in here somewhere, I just know it….

The third thing I spent more time on than I “should” have was in email conversations with two cousins, neither of whom I’ve met in person or even spoken to over the phone. The three of us are joined in a quest to unravel the mysteries of our family history. Two of us are African American and the other one is white. I have a second white cousin who is also working on helping us discover more about the African American (slave) side of the family. It’s been rather fascinating and much more interesting than dwelling on my present day challenges.

For most of my life I have been interested in my family heritage. Part of that interest came from listening to my grandfather tell me stories about his life and that of my father and his brothers. I pestered grandpa for years to tell me our family story, long before Alex Haley popularized the search for his family in “Roots.” The recent popularity of websites like ancestry.com and the associated television program “Who Do You Think You Are” have heightened the interests of thousands (tens of thousands?) of Americans in knowing who their ancestors are. Of course, for many African Americans our trails often dead end on some plantation “down south” somewhere. I know with relative certainty that at least one line on my father’s side of the family emerged from a plantation in Anderson, South Carolina. My grandfather’s grandmother was a slave who migrated (was sold) from South Carolina to Hall County, Georgia. My father’s family settled in and around Atlanta, Georgia, where my father was born. I love a good story, and this is one I’m anxious to tell. I am grateful for all that I am learning about who I am, about who came before me, about the kind of “stuff” I’m made of.

Yep, today has been another one of those days. This evening I had a difficult conversation with my daughter that left both of us feeling somewhat strained. The circumstances of our lives aren’t easy right now, and that’s enough to strain the best relationships. At the heart of it all, however, is a very strong, deep, abiding love that we have for one another. That love is unflappable and stands firm  and unmovable when the storms and winds of life howl all around us. This too will pass.

Practicing gratitude is easy when life is easy; finding things to be grateful for in the midst of hard times is a challenge. But it is like exercising with weights: it’s a strain when you first start lifting weights. You can barely lift those 10 pound dumbbells much less do multiple biceps curls with them. But after a while the 10 pounders get to be too easy and you can do multiple reps without breaking a sweat. So you move up to 15 or 20 pound weights and strain to lift those until they get too easy, and so forth. Right now I am hefting some serious gratitude weights. I hope to have equally serious gratitude muscles when all is said and done.

Yesterday I took a little break from writing this blog. It was another one of those, “I-don’t-have-it-in-me” days when I simply didn’t have enough psychic energy to string words together in a coherent sentence. I struggled through the day pretty much from start to finish and when the evening came and it was time to blog, my spirit was too agitated for me to settle down and write. I am grateful that those days pass, though I try not to lament them too much, even when I’m in the midst of it. I reckon that discouragement, agitation, restlessness, anxiety, anger, depression, and so many of those “negative” emotions are simply part of life, definitely part of my life at the moment. I can get all bent out of shape when I have bad days or I can do my best to breathe and ease my way through them as best I can, knowing that things often look different (if not necessarily better) in the morning. This was true for me today. After a long and difficult day and a restless, wakeful night, I woke in a thoughtful, but not distressed frame of mind.

I want to acknowledge the arrival of yet another anniversary from 2011, my “year of living dangerously.” One year ago today I was laid off from my job (will Saint Patrick’s Day ever be the same?) Being laid off is difficult under any circumstances, but the manner in which I was “let go” ranks up there among some of the most difficult and painful experiences of my life. Even today, one year later, I cannot talk about it and only a very small handful of people know and will ever know what went down, how and why it went down the way it did. One of those people in the know wrote to me today and asked me if I’d done any “processing” about my time with my former employer and the manner in which I’d come to leave the place. And the truth is, though it crossed my mind periodically throughout the day, I hadn’t spent much time thinking about it. I’ve done my best to forgive those who were involved and to “move on.” Forgiveness isn’t easy, but it’s vital for my own sense of wellbeing, integrity, and wholeness that I learn to let go of any residual pain and anger and keep moving forward. Being in a stressful financial situation brought about in part by having been laid off makes this letting go a bit more challenging; but dwelling on and getting upset about what happened a year ago certainly doesn’t put bread on the table, and if anything makes me less able to function optimally. So I’m choosing to let go, again…some more.

I am grateful as I often am after one of my “dark nights of the soul” that in the morning I have a new supply of compassion and grace waiting for me. “God’s compassions fail not, they are new every morning,” says an ancient writer. How cool is that? On nights like I had last night when all I could do at times was rock and pray, I often go to sleep expecting that somehow things will be different in the morning. And while the circumstances perhaps haven’t changed at all, the next morning my attitude or perspective on them has shifted, almost without fail. Yesterday an e-newsletter that I receive  periodically contained a prayer that I’d read before that I want to include here because it speaks to the vulnerability of night time in ways I really resonate with. I hope you find it of value as well.

© M. T. Chamblee, 2012

Wow, am I tired! It’s a good tired, though. From waking early to write, heading off to earn my daily bread, and then off to a wonderful evening class about the central Buddhist teaching on the Eightfold Path, it’s been a long, good day. Talk about right place, right time. Taking this class (and one in February on the Four Noble Truths) is providing much-needed food for thought on the nature of suffering and the pathway through it toward happiness. And even though I am generally tired by the time I get there (and help set up the room for the class), I know that I am drinking in the material at both conscious and subconscious levels. I imagine I’ll still be learning and gaining insight from it when I rest my head on my pillow to sleep tonight. I am grateful for the teachings and for the teacher, whose down-to-earth nature, kindness and compassion, vibrant sense of humor, and deep wisdom are very resonant with my preferences as a learner and somewhat my style as a teacher.

This past week our homework from the class was to practice “right speech” (or wise, skillful, beneficial speech.) It turned out to be incredibly difficult to engage in something that should be relatively simple. I spend a lot of time thinking about words–as a writer it sort of goes with the territory. But there’s definitely a different dynamic when dealing with the written versus the spoken word. When I’m writing, and this blog is a very good example of this, I spend a lot of time sorting through words I want to use to phrase what I’m saying in the most positive way possible. Over the past few years I’ve become quite mindful of reframing what I am saying, moving it out of a negative frame, as best I can and into a more positive, or at least neutral frame. Doing this as I’m sitting down writing is a whole lot easier than it is on the fly, spur of the moment, rough and tumble world of verbal interaction. It can all just happen so fast and suddenly there you are blurting something out and dealing with the ensuing unintended consequences. The blurt factor is particularly hard on introverts who often, when pressed to give an opinion before we’re ready can sometimes get ourselves in trouble saying something we didn’t really mean.

Right or wise speech is about being truthful, not gossipping, speaking in a friendly, gentle manner, and not engaging in idle chatter. In other words, talking only when necessary. I can’t imagine that there are many people alive who have not experienced the power of words to hurt or heal, to bring about joy, peace and happiness or anger, war, and suffering. Sadly, most human beings have been on the receiving end of potentially damaging and destructive words, and equally sad, many of us have also had the experience of delivering hurtful or unhelpful words. That is why learning about wise speech is so incredibly helpful. If I can get this, along with other key concepts of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, I will be further ahead in my quest to be a good human being.

The other week a friend posted a quote on his wall in Facebook that I will post here. I looked all over to find who wrote it so I could give appropriate attribution, but still haven’t quite found it. But here it is:

I did find one attribution that seemed pretty close to this. It’s from Sri Sathya Sai Baba, an Indian Spiritual leader who said “Before you speak, think–Is it necessary? Is it true? Is it kind, will it hurt anyone? Will it improve on the silence?” If you rearrange the letters of this quote (from Thinkexist.com) you still arrive at T.H.I.N.K.: Is it True? Will it Hurt anyone? Will it Improve on the silence? Is it Necessary? Is it Kind?

No matter who said it, it definitely provides a power filter to screen our speech. I didn’t soar in my efforts to engage in “right speech” this past week. There were times I failed miserably and couldn’t seem to get past “Is it true” to even approach whether or not what I was saying in a given moment was helpful, inspiring (or encouraging), necessary or kind. What I was saying might have been true, but it failed the other four criteria. It will take me a while to get the hang of “wise speech” as the Buddha taught it and as this simple tool T.H.I.N.K. encourages me to do. But armed with this new awareness about the importance of right speech and this new approach I know enough to be dangerous! I am definitely looking forward to working with it.

The psalmist writes, “may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing…” May it be so indeed.