This is one of many gratitudes that I found in a notebook that I bought from the thrift store. There was over a year of daily thanks to God. While i may not have the same religion as the author, I have to say that it uplifted my spirit to see them.
Sort of a reminder from the universe. See, other people do these things too!
So often, we see negative. We hear others bickering, we find our own minds torment us with mantras of not being good enough and we see pain in the world every time we turn on the news. I don't know if it is worse now than it was 100 years ago or 50 years ago. I do know that each generation seems to express concern with the way the world is going and I don't know if I can blame anyone for that. In my own lifetime, I have sometimes found it difficult to express my own gratitudes. Sometimes the pain and the suffering cuts too deep or I feel like I simply can't go on. Of course, I do, I am still here. Those of us that do, we remain. We feel the pain and yet we find a reason to go on.
I have been working on my own transparency of practice, which is difficult. At the same time, I keep doing it because that is what I know how to do. As a teacher, I am bound to teach by example. I don't think that this means being happy all of the time. Just because I have an understanding of how the world and the mind works and I have been trained to think a certain way, that doesn't mean that I do it all of the time. In fact, it is the opposite. I am even more aware of when I am not doing it. I know when I should not be dwelling but can't seem to pull myself out. I used to think that breaking down in front of a student meant being a bad example. I have come to realize that it is the opposite. While doing it all too often can be negative (and that is why we are supposed to take a sabbatical in part, when we are feeling mentally exhausted or have experiences that are beyond our emotional control), showing that even those who have been practicing can lose it can be an extremely humanizing experience.
Perhaps this find was even more touching to me, because of that.
These were just some of the ones that I liked out of the lot. There were pages and pages, but it was a big notebook. I had thought I checked them all before I bought it. Turns out I didn't. Actually a good deal of the
