Inspired by real life needs and a beautiful gift of compact words set in a tome, I am sitting here with an idea of gratitude. If there was a time for it, it would be now, when storms in the mind stand out like tornados on otherwise calm waters. Maybe, writing with gratitude in mind will make those storms seem more like eddies, doing whatever eddies do.
I am thankful for my job. I can't deny that. Let's begin with that. I work with students and have spent most of my time on the job thinking that I could be doing such a better job of it. Wait, that is not a gratitude entry. Why am I thinking about this and writing it? Oh, I promised myself I'd do that, do what I ask my students to do. Just write. They ask me how. I don't know, I say, don't you? Am I doing the right thing - I am, right? Doing the right thing? - by putting the questioning back on them? I heard that was a good idea. It usually comes out ok. But I often have to correct the track and take over the conversation to make sure I know where it's going. See, I am grateful to be a teacher. They tell me they are grateful for me. I don't know what that means. I don't know that I do for them what I think I would be grateful to me for. It's like catching fish when you were only trying to catch the bait to lure them. I think. I am a little confused. And that paragraph had more to do with me and my thinking than anything. So, there that is. Am I satisfied being a teacher? No. I want more. But to take away teaching takes away an essential connection... so, let's call it the desire to evolve my teaching into something not just in the classroom or under the auspices of a local school district.
Gratitude doesn't require thinking. I think too much, so I may seem ungrateful. Much of life can be spent thinking about yourself. Wait... I spend much of my time thinking about myself. Me, not you, necessarily, but if this chimes with you, cool. I think I am becoming some guru on letting go, but then I realize that is me thinking about being a guru and therefore it's not really a goal but a thought which can also be let go. I've been instructed to consider my inner voice like a roommate in my head that yaks all the time, and that I am the one who is listening to it. If I first identify that I am not my thoughts and emotions, then that's the path to self. I've been instructed to constantly be looking to live in the present, to know that pain in the body from anxiety is a set of reactions from the past, and to find the self that listens and focus on that quiet observer... then I sit at the seat of consciousness.
See, I wanna be great at that. I am grateful for the knowledge now that I know how to let go of anxiety when it builds up into balls of barbed wire in the belly. Maybe that's magic. But it's all breathing, connecting mind to breath and body, and the results are instant. Maybe that's all thinking still. See.... it gets confusing, until you let it all go and realize You are still there. It's like a game you can always win if you just keep letting things go rather than hold on to them. You don't lose anything; you just don't take on anything more.
I am grateful for healing from internal pain. Truth is I don't have body pain, and that is because I am lucky, and I ate lots of veggies and have apparently-awesome healthy genes. I am grateful for feeling that I can understand what to do to help myself instead of being helplessly thinking and walking in circles or long blocks or just driving and always thinking, always processing...something I know and have done and am done with. Overmixing the batter, adding more thoughts, sweeter thoughts, some alcohol, some subsequent mental vacations... it's a place to be, I tell ya... relief is so wonderfully pleasant you may want to just keep on floating. But I don't really want to float anymore. My life has changed significantly, and through that change I have changed.
I am grateful for change and what is to come, and to be at a point in my life where I can grow from where I was planted while growing where I am currently planted. I will have to face certain realities but I can do that without a fearful mind. The problems can be manageable when you aren't so busy managing you fear of the actual problem. So, I am in a constant place where I am letting go of the feeling of anxiety that comes with the problem, and the problem is outside me but the anxiety is within me. The problem isn't going away... but my fear of it is going away. The world will always present itself and I have learned that letting it flow on through me is a revolutionary act for the self.
I am grateful for being alive, recognizing my pain, and making it my life's work now to grow. I am grateful that I feel OK writing about my insides and exposing them to other's opinions (none of which I am entitled to know let alone do something about). I am grateful to know the part of my inside that has always been me, who was ignored, and who now has a chance to grow in ways I never could have dreamed. I am grateful for the knowledge that every day I can let go and it is a good thing.
I am grateful for Love, a new human in my life who seems pulled from my past unfathomable dreams of possible connection and who stands firmly next to me around the hearth we create between us, together, with whom I get to practice reciprocity, responding from the heart(h), and a Knowing that can only come from what happens when someone was made in a lab just for you, when the old pictures of her and her life told a story I have felt meant to be a part of the whole time. Such gratitude leans into a daily commitment that the time left on this planet will be spent with Love I didn't know was possible, that Love is her and is me, and our love is worth shouting, screaming, singing, sweating, laughing, romping, and writing about.
In a sea of problems, gratitude is a buoy with a light in the ever-present fog -- always there even when you can't see it. Just keep moving, and the moving will take you away from the stagnant solitude inside and eddy you back to the light where you belong.
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