Being Grateful

Years ago Oprah introduced what she called a Gratitude Journal. I, along with many others, jumped on that bandwagon and began to religiously write down 4 or 5 things each day that I was thankful for. It was easy – I had two wonderful boys who were changing and growing daily. I found there were many things I could write about including how fortunate I was to have healthy and happy children. As these things tend to go I found myself slipping as it became harder and harder to not duplicate the same things day after day. I would pick up the journal and jot a few items down. Then I would forget about it for a few months and find it in my bedside table and pick it up again. The entries began to look like this: “I’m thankful for not feeling guilty about not writing for so long”. Not long after this my marriage ended and the book got packed away somewhere. I forgot about it.

(As an aside: Sometimes I feel the same way about this blog. I know I have a few followers, but don’t really know how often they check in, and if they even notice that it may be weeks between entries. So I am grateful to those of you who check in regularly and don’t lose hope in me.)

I found my old “gratitude journal” when I moved for the second time in 4 years. I flipped through it and found that not a lot had changed. I am not rich. I am not beautiful. I am not famous. I am not spectacularly good at any one thing. But I am still thankful for the health that I, and those close to me, enjoy. I’m thankful the writing muse deems me important enough to visit on occasion. I’m thankful for a great run on a cool morning. I’m thankful for having someone in my life to share things with. And though I don’t feel the need to write things down on a daily/weekly/monthly basis I still consider myself very fortunate in the general scheme of things.

Whenever I get upset at something that isn’t going quite as planned, for example finding myself hopelessly stuck in traffic, I try to halt briefly for a moment before I let it get to me. There are people in cities all over the world who have worse traffic woes than three cycles of a traffic light before getting through an intersection. I am fortunate that I don’t HAVE to use my car to commute on a daily basis. And perhaps that is why I get frustrated. I can usually walk faster than my car is going on some stretches. Those days I wish that I could just get out of my car, fold it up and put it in my pocket and then walk until the traffic volume spreads out and then just unfold the car and get back in and drive. In an ideal world…Instead, I plop in a CD or tune into a top-40 radio station (one of my guilty pleasures) and sing at the top of my voice. By the time a couple songs have played the traffic jam is usually behind me. Music gets me through (as you may have noticed in the last two posts) and I’m thankful for that in my life.

I think the trick is to stop and pause before you immediately assume something is going to be bad. There is a lot more to be grateful for than to be anxious about. I have wasted a lot of emotion in the past on dread that never materialized. A very wise person always tells me, “Everything happens for a reason.” Sometimes I have to search for that reason, but it is always there. And I am always grateful for it.