Seven shades of gratitude

Here are seven things for which I am grateful:

• that I am alive. What does it mean to be alive? I believe it is to have a consciousness, an awareness that animates us, the vital spark of a spirit. I consider those that have passed into another plane and I don't know where they're headed or where they've landed, but I'm grateful I'm in this life, this body, this truth that constantly evolves as I decide.
• for my ability to love and be loved. Everything in the universe is made of energy and perhaps that energy is neutral, but I believe it pulsates with the force of love. Some people say "God is love," and if I translate the ultimate divine being as the creator of all, the originator of love, then I see that everything connects through love. At birth I had no filter against love, but human will allows us to accept and reject as we decide. Circumstances, choices and character inhibited my ability to love and be loved, so I veered toward becoming an angry and disappointed person. I've mostly healed my spirit and become a being able to open my heart. I imagine it as this cavernous temple that once echoed with lone footsteps, transformed into a place of laughter and a warmth from connection to other beings that confirms I'm never alone.
• for the love of family, friend and others. It can seem simpler and easier to shut down one's heart and avoid the messy and changeable emotions and attachments of relationships. I say: without risk the potential of success defaults to zero. Yes, failure and the in-between of loss, misunderstandings and suffering, they are also up for grabs, but these add heat, flavor and valuable lessons to life. I am as grateful for the love of people whom I struggle to understand as I am for the love of people who are easily identified as tribe.
• the passion I feel for words and ideas. I've already expressed my love for language and ideas. Now, I revel in the everyday simplicity of relinquishing my resistance to this passion - I make space to write and share this with others, instead of reserving words for the closed pages of journals. I give thanks I needed to spend years hiding words like a chipmunk her acorns for the long winter, but it's summer now and the seeds I've sown have sprouted and rise up toward the sun.
• for improved communication skills. As I accept my own personal truths - the pretty parts and the ones that look better in candle light - and am able to be honest about them, it becomes easier it is to live in my own skin and be happy in it. When I don't fear who I am, and through writing it down to share, communication with my partner, for example, lightens and sweetens.
  
• that I learned that precipitating change in the world starts as an inside job. I spent years intermittently going to therapy to try to understand my internal landscape through the perspective of the people in my life, my experiences and to heal the rift between who I was and who I wanted to be. I learned much and created some scar tissue to seal the wounds, and then I set out to create a bridge across the gap. I will eventually gain enough momentum to leap the last distance across, but for now I take small steps toward the life I dream about and aspire to create. I'm on my way, now.
• for the beauty of the world. As a person who can spin lost or sad about the state of affairs amongst people, the environment, and what looks to be a broken web between, I thank the combination of factors that inspires me to still embrace the wondrous nature of creation and revel in it. As Byron Katie suggests: be "a lover of what is." The world is beautiful, despite its sorrows, troubles and even its terrors. The world is beautiful and I am a part of it, just as you are a part of its beauty.

 

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