In my office I have a book of poetry by e.e.cummings. In it he wrote, “I thank You God for this most amazing day; for the leaping greenly spirit of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.”
Throughout my adult life I have tried to keep my focus on gratitude, but recently I have come to realize that as the we weave our way through today’s world, the face of gratitude has changed for me. This past 18 months of quarantine in my home, not only is finding my gratitude more challenging, but the focus of my gratitude has shifted.
A few years ago I submitted an entry to my blog about gratitude and I talked about my Gratitude Journal. At that time, I wrote: “I’m so old that when I was in elementary school we could actually pray. I remember the “Johnny Appleseed” prayer we used to recite daily before we ate our lunch: “Oh the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and the apple seed. The Lord is good to me.” Did you have a prayer like that? Sort of the “God is great, God is good, and we thank him for our food.” plain brown wrapper kind of prayer that you recited without ever really thinking about it? Well, when I looked at my supposedly marvelous gratitude journal, that is pretty much what I saw. My entries were basically, “I am thankful for my home, my family, my friends, and my health.” And I just sort of recycled those themes over and over again in one form or another over the years.”
As a result of this self-examination, I made the decision to work on gratitude with specificity, and as I look back through my journal entries I can see that I was trying to do better. I made entries where I wrote that I was grateful for a loving husband, for my son and his precious wife, for my husband’s family, for the fun we had with friends, a safe vacation trip, a yummy meal at my favorite restaurant. Reading what I wrote, it seemed that actually the only thing that changed was that I added some details. Sitting here in the context of today, these entries seem pretty frivolous and inconsequential.
Technology is here to stay. Think about where your focus lands throughout any given day. Your computer? Your smart phone? Your tablet? Social media? Your television? Turning on the news these days can be a pretty scary thing indeed! We hear news of an ever-rising death count from a worldwide pandemic, global warming that is resulting in horrific weather news: floods, hurricanes, wild fires, mud slides, drought. Political ideologies have torn us assunder. Murder hornets are here, home-schooling isn’t working, people are out of work, and of course, we can’t omit the turmoil in the Middle East. Today’s technology-driven life style shifts our focus from internal self-reflection to external influences. When my focus is on these worldly events, it is easy for me to slip into depression and frustration.
As I dig into my recent journal entries, I see our world reflected in my words. Instead of a fun evening at a restaurant, I am thankful to have food available to me. In place of remembering a fun evening with friends, I am grateful to have clean drinking water. I am blessed to sleep safely in a bed. I have written how humbled I am to have shelter, shoes, clothes, health care. Then there are the luxuries that I take for granted: air conditioning, heat, refrigeration, running water, television, internet…the list is endless, isn’t it?
As my world continues to change, my gratitude must change as well. Today, there are so many in the world who don’t have even the basic necessities of life. So for today, I say, “Indeed, I am richly blessed.”
Chalk Dust and Dreams 