Are you thankful for that brake pedal, that technology for stopping an enormous amount of kinetic energy, that saves you and others on the road from having a disastrous day? How many times per day do we travel in traffic and put our right foot down on that pedal and just expect the car to pull up, so we don’t career into the car in front of us? How many times have we had near misses that we clean forgot about a moment later? Amid being frustrated with the blockages to traffic, those horrendous traffic jams, think for a moment on all that starting and stopping, how reliant we are on our brakes. They save a thousand painful realities.
Are you thankful that you have arms and legs, ways and means of moving around and using your hands? Not everyone has two arms and two legs or the use of them, but if you do, you are blessed, even if they don’t work very well. Hands are incredible things, they give so much dexterity, but we often take hands for granted, like for turning a doorknob, or using a knife and fork, or to speed-type a text. There’s something surreal in looking down at our hands and saying thank you. All those things our hands and fingers have been able to achieve for us over our lifetimes. All those times we squashed our fingers into doorjambs, and our hands just diligently got on with the task of healing. All those cuts, and maybe a break or burn or two, and whilst there are scars, those hands of ours continue to do what they’re supposed to do.
If you have shelter tonight, even if it’s not the Ritz, there’s a reason to be thankful. There’s a lot to be said for being dry and warm on a cold night, or of having the resources to stay cool in the heat. We only need to think of times when we didn’t have these basic needs met and we are quickly grateful. Think of all the functions in a modern home, all the technology, the lighting, the ablutions, the soft furnishings, and everything else, most of which we take for granted. Think of the hundreds if not thousand(s) of possessions you own. It’s not until we leave home for a long time and embark on a trip that we pine for home and can’t wait to be back there.
I don’t know everyone who will read this, but I’m imagining most people love music, some kind of music. Music moves our hearts, and it inspires us to happiness and sadness and all kinds of emotions between. Music ministers to our moods. Even those who have hearing difficulties and deafness appreciate the beauty of music through the preciousness of those soundwaves that punctuate the melody. Those favourite songs of ours we’ve played hundreds sometimes thousands of times. But it’s not often that we are thankful for our hearing, for those ears that give us the opportunity to receive sound, or for our brains that perceive the tunes that titillate us.
There are so many routine things that we all take for granted, and realistically, wherever we are and whatever mood takes us, we can convert the moment into gratitude in 10 seconds or less. All we need to do when we succumb to complaint or frustration, or begin to despair, lose hope, or spiral downward in the panic of grief, is to become aware... then switch.
Gratitude won’t change our reality, but it does give us perspective. It reframes the present. Gratitude borrows from a present we don’t readily see and fortifies it with a dose of reality. Gratitude aligns us with truths that save us from a lack of vision propelling us to wisdom.
Gratitude. It’s a choice to align to reality. Instead of our focusing on what we don’t have, we focus on the plethora we do have.
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