The Thing About Thanks

The most helpful gratitude hack

Sometimes gratitude is so easy to access
And sometimes you have to work for it.
Like love, it can wash over you.
Or it can feel so far down a well
That the entire world’s supply of ropes and pulleys
Won’t help.

Yesterday I had such a rush of gratitude.
While scrubbing the rice pot.
What?
It wasn’t even my own rice pot.
I don’t eat the rice.
Though I do eat the butter while I’m making it.
So there was a lot of opportunity to be annoyed.
And yet I was almost giddy with gratitude
The water.
The smell of Mrs Meyer’s lavender.
Healthy food in the house.
Choices.
The freedom to leave pots in the sink if we want to.
Along with the other bigger freedoms that implies.
Standing.
And on my way back up to a project I love.
The person who loves the rice.
All the humans who made this rice possible.
The friend who gave us this pot when she moved.
I miss her.
And then I stopped.
Because I’m not grateful for missing her.
Which reminded me about the gratitude hack.

Not just being grateful for the ‘good’ things.
Like today’s NYT’s spangram’s words were all those good things
*spoiler alert - health - work - family - food - friends.
Who can argue with the heavy hitters of the home and heart.
But when we stop there
We miss the beat of deep gratitude.

Once upon a time
In a yoga class
We were winding down into meditation.
The teacher instructed us to sit with gratitude.
To be thankful
For whatever crossed our minds.

What the heck?
If you meditate you know: many things cross your mind.
And the thing is to let them keep crossing.
Yes please move it along thought.
Almost as if you’re a crossing guard:
Getting children safely to the other side.
Protecting even the problem child.
Maybe most especially.

This teacher told us to find a way to be grateful for whatever crossed our minds.
I mean did she know the kinds of things that crossed my mind?
The thing I should have done?
The thing I shouldn’t have done?
That thing that guy said and what I wished I’d said back?

I can’t remember if the teacher told me this next part.
Or of I discovered it.
And if I discovered it, how.
But it’s what helped flip my switch.

It’s a tool to use when you feel whiny.
Resentful. Sad. Clingy.
I’ll use split milk - the metaphor of everything annoying.
What you are not supposed to cry about.
But of course - ‘not crying’ can mean repressing.
Being grateful is different than that.
And it would go like this.
Grateful for the spilt milk because…
It gave me a chance to get on my knees and realize I can get on my knees.
It got me started on cleaning the floor.
The milk was beginning to sour and I might have used it without noticing.
It gave me a reason to stop rushing - to pause before writing an angry email about something that resolved itself peacefully without me.

Of course sometimes the dark things that cross our minds
Are deeper and more challenging than spilt milk.
But if I can start to say why I’m grateful for them
It helps broaden my perspective.
I shift.
And that’s the miracle.
The shift in consciousness.
The thing it is easy to be truly grateful for every time.

So - why not just be grateful for everything?
For me - too bland and general.
Fuzzy.
Like humming my way off key through a beautiful song.
So I get specific.
Which feels like a full expression.
Highly articulated.
And somehow always gets me unstuck.
That’s the greatest gift of gratitude.
Unstucking.

I was thinking about the parade today.
There’s a reason the floats of the Thanksgiving Day parade resonate.
Gratitude can feel like it floats above us.
Tantalizing.
Playful.
A better more appealing version.
Filled with buoyancy.
Just out of reach.

But I’m telling you with all my heart
That standing in the back of the crowd and not being able to see the floats.
Having cold hands and feet.
If you can find a way to be grateful for even that.
Because you are so glad you even have hands and feet.
Because you can see the children watching with ecstasy
And it has awakened your own ecstasy
In a way that the inflated plastic never would.
Because you remember that looking inward it always available.
You’ve got this gratitude hack in your back pocket

I’m so grateful
I received this instruction.
That this platform exists to share it with you.
And so much more.
Everything really.
Even the rice pot.
And missing my friend who gave it to me.

xx
Beth

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