I am thankful every day. Every single day I do a morning inventory of all the many blessings in my life. So many blessings. It is how I begin each day. It has also become an unwitting thermometer for my spiritual fitness. Some days, despite the fact that I am laying in my amazing bed, in my amazing home, that I own, surround by love (furred and unfurred) somedays I have trouble coming up with 12 things I am grateful for...which makes me sad and a little despondent each time it happens.
I feel shitty when I lag on the flow of gratitude because I always know that I have way more to be grateful for than my failing brain can conjure some mornings. This is the case most of the time. But sometimes I wake and I do not feel grateful. Despite all the many blessings I have in my life, I am focused, literally upon awakening thinking only of all the things I lack, the inherent problems in my life (mostly of my own making). And it takes me longer than it should to direct my mind into the well worn groove of gratitude practice.
But I get there, sometimes it just takes me a little longer than usual. And I have become grateful for even that...the time it takes me to refocus myself onto the “soul-tion”. And to allow all the shit my head tells me is important, to fall away and remember that I am alive, breathing in and out, nothing currently paining me, I love many, and am loved by many.
So today, on my favorite holiday, I wake up thankful and thanks giving. I am thankful for this life, mired as it may be in negative thinking and habitual patterns that don’t serve me or anyone else very well at times. It is mine and I am truly trying to make the best of myself and all this life I have been given.
I am thankful for each of you dear readers. For showing up every day to read the incessant ramblings in my head that find their escape out of the prison of my mind and onto this screen. Thank you for being there for me, again, still.
May you have a day that brings as much fullness to your heart, mind and soul as it does your belly.
"Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you're already in heaven now." Jack Kerouac
Thanks, Jack. It is amazing how much the world shifts in perspective when we are grateful, kind and giving.
