Choosing Gratitude

In going through all my photos in my old bedroom at my parent’s house, I found this one:
This is my Bumpa.  He and his wife Mamie ‘adopted’ my brother and I as their grandkids.  They were with us for every Christmas (and every birthday, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Halloween …) pretty much every day of our lives for as long as we can remember.

Mamie would play for hours with  me on Christmas morning, with whatever new toy I had received.  It was Bumpa’s ever-present pocket knife that cut open the boxes, through the tape, and into the blister packages containing the necessary batteries.

I took this picture a few years ago, when the bladder cancer that eventually claimed Bumpa was just starting to rear it’s very ugly head.

Mamie passed away about 15 years ago.  Bumpa, who went down fighting, died last year, a few days before Thanksgiving.

This will be our first Christmas without them.

It’s times like these that pictures are worth a thousand words.  There are a thousand platitudes to offer people who are facing holidays without loved ones, but for me this picture captures everything I want to remember about Christmas with Mamie and Bumpa.   The joy, the silliness, the sense of family that comes from not only those who you’re related to, but from those you choose to be a part of your family.

This year, I am choosing to be grateful for the many wonderful years I had with Mamie and Bumpa.  I will remember all they have taught me and all I have learned from them.  I will still miss them – a lot – but I this Christmas I am choosing gratitude.

Thank you.

Loving Less

Coming off the Thanksgiving Challenge, wherein each day I wrote about something I was grateful for, I came across a couple alternative approaches to counting one’s blessings.

Instead of being thankful for something, Yoga for Cynics made a list of things they were thankful not to have.  The list included the major things like illness, injury and the recent deaths of close loved ones, but also included little gems like

…no fear of the dark…no desire to go on American Idol, star in my own reality show, be elected President of the United States, win the Tour de France, or be sixteen again…no desire to murder, rape, molest, or seriously maim…not nearly as much anger or hatred as I used to carry around with me…fewer enemies, fewer people I’m unwilling to forgive….no belief that I’m inherently better than anyone…and I’m working on getting rid of the belief that I’m worse…

Pretty brilliant little list.   YfC closes with “…might sum it all up with thanks for nothin’, but suspect I’d be misunderstood…because nothin’ has always been underrated…”

Which leads us to the next related post on mnmlist on learning to love less where the idea that “nothing is underrated” is given deeper exploration.  This brilliant post from mnmlist focuses on enjoying a lesser AMOUNT of things (food, clothes, Twitter, TV, etc…) which increases the quality of the enjoyment.  It’s the basic concept of quantity versus quality.

Look at the clothing example.  It makes more sense financially, emotionally and spacially to have a few quality pieces of clothes that you really love than it is to have a closet full of cheap trendy pieces that fall apart after one wash and go out of style a month later.

Trying to keep your closet stocked with the latest and greatest is a drain on your budget and sticks you firmly in the rat race of trying to always stay on top.

And in the end, you’re just a broke rat.

When the focus shifts towards enjoying quality and not quantity, your whole life opens up.  Relationships become deeper and more meaningful. The beauty and abundance inherent in every little thing is made clear.  Learning to enjoy  less increases our ability to be content and happy with the few, meaningful things we have.  As mnmlist says, “the only limit to your happiness, then, is how much you can learn to enjoy less.”

Thanksgiving, Maine and So Much to be Grateful For

This year the Husband-Elect and I spent four awesome days with my family in Maine.

at the thanksgiving table

We had so much to be grateful for!

The Thanksgiving Challenge/Gratitude Challenge over the past couple weeks has been a great opportunity to be consciously aware of all that we have to be thankful for.  Even on the most difficult days, once I started to think about a couple little things that I was grateful for: mascara, my hairdryer, rubber boots, it was easier to snowball it into bigger things so that even in the midst of a very challenging moment, when it would have been very easy to get negative, I was able to find the positive and look at the situation as an opportunity rather than giving up.

While I won’t be continuing a daily gratitude on a daily basis here on Perusals, I will post once a week or so if there’s something especially striking.

Thank you to all who read this blog and participated in the Thanksgiving Challenge.  I hope that you, like me, feel so much more abundance in your life after taking the time to remember all you have to be thankful for.

In the meantime, here are a couple snap shots from the few days in Maine:

howling winds and sand on Wells Beach

BIRDS!

daily gratitude – it’s spelled vay-cay-shun

Today I am grateful for five days out of the city, in Maine, with my family and the Husband-Elect.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, whether you are staying home or traveling.  Be safe, be happy and take some time to breathe in all that you are thankful for.

Note: I’ll still be posting on Perusals through the next five days thanks to my new netbook and a wireless router at my parent’s house.

daily gratitude: The Grateful List

A short list of the things I’m grateful for today:

- mature and clean roommates
- hazelnut coffee
- green tea
- my yoga students (they rock!)
- the ability and passion to teach yoga
- modified half-pigeon pose
- my job
- my paycheck
- morning check-in phone calls with Mom
- five days of vacation starting in 48 hours!
- the Husband-Elect and his boundless enthusiasm
- being out of high school for 10 years (yes, time heals all wounds)
- pie

daily gratitude: triple threat

Saturday, 11/21/09

Grateful for quiet weekend days when I can putter around the house, run errands, do laundry, get to the yoga studio and still have time to sit with a cup of tea and read a good book.  These days are so rare they are a true gift and the best way to recharge my batteries.

Sunday 11/22/09

Grateful for good friends and good food!  Had a lovely and successful (if I do say so myself) dinner party last night with my roommates, the Husband-Elect and a couple friends in town from NYC.  Earlier in the day the H-E and I gathered with his friends from high school and college for a huge brunch hosted by the magnificent Alyssa and Rob.  It was a day of shared laughs, drinks and food.  A beautiful way to spend a Sunday.

Monday, 11/23/09

Today I am grateful (and hopeful) for my farm share.  This year was a rough year for all farmers and I am excited about the chance to sign up again for a second year.  The experience was wonderful (and much blogged about here on Perusals … check out the CSA (community supported agriculture) or Parker Farm tags for all related blogs) and I learned a ton about using, preparing and cooking a lot of new fruits and veggies.

If you’ve never done a farm share, I highly recommend it!  Your money goes to support a local farmer and in exchange you get a weekly delivery of fresh, in-season produce.  It will also cut your grocery bill in half for the summer and fall!

Check out Local Harvest for csa’s near you, as well as farmer’s markets.

The Gift of Thanks

In the New York Times Books section, their “Book of the Times” is Margaret Visser’s The Gift of Thanks.

In the review, the author touches on the intersection of gratitude and yoga.  Obviously, this was not deliberate but since yoga is (always) on my brain and since I’ve been doing this Thanksgiving Challenge now for about a week, the words resonated with me.

Here are a few snippets:

In the book, Visser,

“writes about the humility required to be genuinely grateful, and the essential ability to climb out of one’s own head.

“Gratitude is always a matter of paying attention,” she writes, of “deliberately beholding and appreciating the other.”

Gratitude is, fundamentally, about not taking things for granted, a kind of worldview.

Heck yeah!  If this week has taught me anything it is that gratitude is absolutely a worldview.  It is a way of teasing out the positive and consciously beholding. Remembering to be thankful.

In yoga, the practice of asana (the poses) and meditation (silent sitting) teaches us to be aware and in the present moment, to behold our thoughts, actions and the actions of others around us without engaging and without judgment.  When we feel gratitude, we release any attachment we had to the person or action and deliberately choose to feel only joy in that moment.

As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches and stress levels and emotions run high, it’s even more important to take a step back, climb out of our own heads and behold the beauty and joy of the people and things around us with compassion, humility and gratitude.

Thank you, Margaret Visser, for reminding us of that.

daily gratutude – friday

Short, sweet and simple:

I am so grateful today is Friday.

To share your gratitude, check out the excellent group Thankfulfor.com.  They run a great website and blog filled with ideas and ways to acknowledge what you’re thankful for in any given moment.

daily gratitude – communication

This is a multi-gratitude day because I am thankful for communication in many forms.

I am grateful the type of silent communication that happens when you’re with a good friend and there’s no need to say anything at all.  When each can just be in the others presence in peace and comfort.

I am grateful for the times in so many phone and in-person conversations between the Husband-Elect and I when we go to ask the other person a question and they’ve already known the question and have started to answer before the question is even asked.

I am thankful for the opportunities to clarify, discuss further and dig deeper into misunderstandings, deep thoughts and tough ideas with compassion and understanding.

I am grateful to be able to communicate with my yoga students in class by calling out the poses, cues and modifications and listening to their concerns.  The most rewarding communication in yoga class happens when I see  the joy and understanding in their own faces when they start listening to their own bodies and use their breath to deepen the internal communication.

I am grateful for the communication I have with my own body.  Learning to listen to what your body is telling you is one of the hardest things to learn, but absolutely the most rewarding.

Lastly, I am thankful for the chance to communicate all this with you though Perusals.  Thank you WordPress!

 

 

daily gratitude – food

one of this summer's CSA deliveries

How often do you sit down (and I mean sit in a chair at a table) and savor every bite of the food you eat?  Pretty much never, right?

Try it tonight.

Whether it’s a homemade dinner, a review night of leftovers, or take out from the local Indian place around the corner, when you sit down to dinner, take a bite, close your eyes, and taste what you’re eating.  The final part: be grateful.

I am so thankful for access to great food, for my enjoyment of cooking, meal-planning and food gathering, and for the opportunities to share this with my roommates, the Husband-Elect and with you.

This season, in gratitude to your own abundance, consider donating to one of these organizations:

• Greater Boston Food Bank, which supports soup kitchens, food pantries and a lot of other outreach programs in the metro area
• Meals on Wheels brings food to the elderly, disabled and homebound
• Freedom from Hunger provides microloans and health education to women so they can provide healthier food choices for their families
• UNICEF fights hunger on an international level through outreach, education and the provision of food and equipment.

If you know of any other local or international food-related charities please share them in the comments.