Gratitude For What Is, Right Now
I would maintain
that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that
gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
G. K. Chesterton
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Of all of the holidays in our calendar,
both civic and religious, Thanksgiving Day brings together
all of the essential elements of being “Abundantly Alive
Now!” We all understand the connection between Thanksgiving
and abundance as we sit down to eat enormous feasts. What
intrigues me is the connection between Thanksgiving and time,
and how this connection affects what it means to be fully
“alive.” Thanksgiving Day is the holiday that
celebrates the “Now” in a unique way.
Did you ever play with a magnifying glass
in the sun? If you hold the magnifying class steady, you can
concentrate the rays of the sun onto a combustible object
and watch the object catch on fire. Thanksgiving Day can be
that kind of magnifying glass to focus powerful and transformative
energy onto your life.
Develop an
attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything
that happens to you, knowing that every step forward
is a step toward achieving something bigger and better
than your current situation.
Brian Tracy
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Thanksgiving Day is a focal point, where
past and future converge into one single moment. Thanksgiving
Day is a pivot between the past and the future, between what
was and what can be. Thanksgiving Day is a fulcrum between
where we have been and where we are going. Thanksgiving Day
is the ultimate spiritual holiday because it exists to offer
gratitude for the realities of the present moment.
I know, I know. The reality of Thanksgiving
Day can be very different, and anything but spiritual. Cooks
can become frazzled and frustrated with twenty-five pound
turkeys and conflicting family traditions about what must
be included on the Thanksgiving table. As a case in point,
consider this letter to Miss Manners.
Dear Miss
Manners:
My sister-in-law always serves
white potatoes for Thanksgiving. She already knows that
my husband and I don’t eat white potatoes, and
we don’t eat stuffing because it contains white
bread.
When I offered to make whipped
organic sweet potatoes at her house, she acted offended
and said she didn’t have room for another cook
in her kitchen.
We think it is insensitive to
serve a dish she knows we don’t eat, and then
not let us contribute something in its place. My husband
thinks we should just cancel and not go.
Miss Manners
Judith Martin |
And if the food isn’t enough to
push a cook over the edge of sanity, Macy’s Thanksgiving
Day parade and football games provide plenty of other distractions
to keep us off balance. Thanksgiving travel also means frantic
airports and heavy traffic. And families are made up of fallible
human beings who bring their loves and hurts and oddities
to dinner. Whatever tensions exist in the family do not go
away because the calendar tells us to be thankful.
But underneath all of the stresses and
excesses of the day, Thanksgiving Day occurs in our calendars
as a unique opportunity to focus our scattered minds on “Now.”
At its core, Thanksgiving Day calls us to be grateful for
what is, right now.
The truth is, most of us are not grateful
for what is, right now. We are pulled away from the present
moment by memories of the past or thoughts about the future.
We can have fears, hopes, dreams and plans about the future.
But our lives are not in the future. Whatever will be, it
is not now.
At the same time, we can be pulled backwards,
with regrets, hurts, and happy and sad memories. But our lives
are not in the past. Whatever was, it is not now. Meditation
teaches us to settle our monkey minds on now. Nothing is harder
than this. The ultimate human challenge is to be fully present
right now.
The second human challenge is to be grateful
for what is, right now. Thanksgiving is the remedy for two
profound discontents in our lives. The first discontent is
to be so focused on the injustices of the past that there
can be no room for gratitude for the present. The second discontent
is to be so focused on striving toward getting what we want
that there is no room for gratitude for what we already have.
Gratitude
changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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When I think of the connection between
gratitude and the past, I think of my mother. I knew my mother
as a bitter woman. If she was grateful for anything in her
life, I was never aware of it. I am quite sure I never heard
her say “thank you” for anything. I do remember
constant complaints about the unfairness of her life, and
the injustices that had happened to her in the past. Her bitterness
about the past kept her from ever being satisfied with anything
at any moment.
Instead of being grateful for what she
had in the “Now,” my mother “made do.”
I heard that phrase again and again. “Make do with what
you have.” “Making do” meant eating what
she hated, wearing what she hated, living where she hated,
being with people she hated, and doing what she hated (including
being a mother.)
My mother was incapable of expressing
gratitude in the “Now” because her past was too
much with her. It also robbed her of her capacity to enjoy
her life, and made living with her a painful ordeal. I was
truly grateful to escape her presence the day after my eighteenth
birthday.
Gratitude
unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have
into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance,
chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a
meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into
a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings
peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Melody Beattie
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The opposite extreme to my mother’s
focus on the past is the tendency to focus on getting more
in the future. “More” is a disease that afflicts
us all in a consumer society. Wanting more has become a way
of life. We are so used to wanting more and more and more
that we don’t realize how much wanting more also robs
us of the capacity to enjoy life in the “Now.”
The entire advertising industry exists
to make us want more than we have. Ads are designed to build
discontent and dissatisfaction. Advertising has to persuade
us that something is missing in our lives so that we will
rush out and buy it. In contrast, Thanksgiving Day asks us
to focus on what is, right now, and be grateful for what we
have right now.
I have written before about the question,
"What is enough?" (November 8, 2005.) Knowing “what
is enough” is dramatically different from “making
do.” “Making do” comes from a belief in
lack. “What is enough” is firmly rooted in a belief
in abundance. When you decide that “this is enough,”
you are making a statement about being satisfied in the present
moment. You know that there could be more, but you are satisfied
right now with what you have.
“This is enough right now”
doesn’t mean that you stop dreaming or planning for
more in the future. It simply means that you are willing to
be content with whatever you have right now. And when you
are content, you are able to be grateful for what is, right
now.
Happiness
cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed.
Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every
minute with love, grace, and gratitude.
Denis Waitley
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Finally we come to the connection between
gratitude and being “alive.” Robert Emmons of
the University of California at Davis is a professor of psychology
who has conducted research studies on gratitude and thankfulness.
Clinical research has demonstrated that gratitude results
in greater psychological and physical well being.
Grateful people
report higher levels of positive emotions, life satisfaction,
vitality, optimism and lower levels of depression and
stress. The disposition toward gratitude appears to
enhance pleasant feeling states more than it diminishes
unpleasant emotions. Grateful people do not deny or
ignore the negative aspects of life.
Robert Emmons
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/emmons/ |
Gratitude is the secret of living an
Abundantly Alive Now! life. Whatever else you do on Thanksgiving
Day, I encourage you to be grateful for what is, right now.
For Your Abundance during this Thanksgiving season,
Kalinda Rose Stevenson
PS. Click here for Words
of Gratitude for Mind, Body, and Soul by
Robert A. Emmons and Joanna Hill.
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