The importance of gratitude

I believe that the key to happiness is gratitude. Gratitude comes in many forms, and not all are equal. Some people cannot find it in their hearts to be grateful, no matter what happens, but those people are for another post. Some people can find gratitude in good things that happen to them, and this is a good beginning. There is a Taoist principle that things happen, it is we that apply meaning to them, and thus label them "good" or "bad". I'll look that up when I'm home, so I don't mislead the good reader.

A better approach is to be grateful for everything that happens, because it is all part of the great, perfect mystery that we call life. If you consider life to be a beautiful, perfect screenplay, everything that has happened, everyone we've met, everything we have done, has all been part of the perfect plan that God has laid out for us. Instead of cursing at events we don't like, be grateful for what it teaches you. Study an athlete, or watch a child with a skateboard practicing. They learn from what isn't working, and correct it. A slow driver in front of you teaches patience, and the fact you were upset about it says you need to learn some! The person that left a dent on your car door was teaching you to release your attachment to material things. The spouse that left, the parent that abandoned you - they were teaching you self-reliance, and the degree to which it crushed you is the amount of self-reliance you needed to learn. Nothing is in greater quantities than you can handle; we may think it is, but we underestimate our own abilities. I remember in Karate class one day, our sensei asked us how many of us could do 200 push-ups. Not one of us answered yes, and Sensei told us gently "You all can do 200 push-ups; the difference is that you don't know it yet." For the next hour, we did sets of push-ups, punctuated by various running exercises, and at the end of the hour, all of us knew we could do it. I've never forgotten that lesson, although I may doubt myself sometimes.

While I use this blog as a personal soapbox, I never want the dear reader to assume I don't struggle with what I blog. I write to release what is pent-up inside me, to understand more completely what I am going through, to remind myself not to take myself too seriously. I write to create balance in my life, to express what I want to feel, and not necessarily what I am feeling at that moment. Teaching others, writing in a journal, or trying to explain our actions to the RCMP officer affords us a sense of self-awareness, to correct our thinking, and to proceed.

Right now I am sitting with a neck that is so stiff, it sounds like shattering pasta when I rotate my head. I have a stabbing pain when I look over my shoulder, and for that, I am grateful. The pain tells me that I need to ask "Why so serious?" to the mirror. To revisit where I am, what I have become and to decide if the stress I have created for myself is useful. Is this pain useful? We'll see. Is it a reminder that I have my eyes cast down, seeking problems, instead of lifting my head up to see the solutions? I think so.

Better to be grateful for what you have, for tomorrow you may grieve its loss.

The portrait above is Darren, thoroughly enjoying himself.