Bring On The Gratitude!

Since I was a child, gratitude has been a practice that has enhanced my quality of life.  I know it's silly to think, if I just write down a few thoughts everyday of things that I'm thankful for, I'll feel better as a person.  Well, it kind of just works.  I'm not saying that every day of my teenage years I looked at life with the glass half full, very much the opposite actually.  Having deep clinical depression at that age, my mind very much looked at the things that were wrong about myself and how I felt I was a horrible person.  But in cherishing the little good moments, in feeling accomplished for going to work out at the gym or for having good times with friends, I was able to not only keep myself afloat in a sea of teenage angst, but get myself to the next phase of life with some pretty challenging circumstances. 

I was not ready to enter a school of 2,000+ high school students, I was not ready to be an adult, I was not ready to have to hold down a full course load of college classes, I was not ready to experience psychosis, those are all things that have traumatized me and created a life that I wasn't enjoying.  But in those moments of true peril, I was able to find that I could make things just a little bit better if I savored the many tiny good moments that I found in between the chaos.  I remember it was small things like being able to pay for my lunch and enjoy the many flavors of my sandwich, to have a warm apartment to call my own.  Then it was also the big things like having incredible parents who were supportive of my college ventures and who were compassionate of my struggles and loving and diligent at finding me help and healing in the best ways they could.  Starting to feel gratitude again after experiencing the terrors of a mental illness was like watering a plant that was dying for water.  The injustice at that experience can really turn someone against the world.  Luckily because of my gratitude practice, I was able to hold on to some of my humanity and some of my love for life that was being covered up by the illness.  Gratitude kept me from the worst fate imaginable, and helped me to to feel even a sliver of warmth in those dark days. Then, having gratitude for being able to return to health, I was that much more able to be back in the world, let go of the bad times and create new better ones.

Gratitude for me now is a practice as close to me as brushing my teeth.  I have gratitude for the sun and the way it so beautifully shines out my window.  Sure my window looks out onto a brick wall and all I see of the sun is a small square of it on that wall but you know damn well I'm still grateful that I can see even a little sliver of it.  I am grateful for the people and animals in my life, my family, friends, my dog Zoey.  I practice gratitude in small ways like telling them how much they mean to me and thanking them for little things here and there.  I'm grateful for a mind and body that are protected from mental illness due to lifesaving medications.  I'm grateful for things big and small.  And you know what?  Being grateful is a paradigm shift.  Because even though I don't have so many things right now, a 9-5 job, a lifelong partner by my side, I still love my life!  I love it because I look at what it is full of instead of what it's not.  It's full of laughter and cute times with  my friends.  It's full of a sustaining yoga practice and many phenomenal teachers.  It's full of warm home cooked gourmet meals.  So I'm going to go take a bath and savor the way the water makes me feel good, maybe put some epsom salts in and let those take effect, and  I'm not going to dwell on the fact that it's -1 degree Fahrenheit right now, I'm going to instead, lean into the warmth that is available to me in this very moment, and that is gratitude.