I do not doubt gratitude is at the heart of human well-being. Personal well-being. And the well-being of the Earth.
Fear, anger, greed, grief, regret, guilt, anxiety, despair and a host of other negative emotions are all possible, and often reasonable and understandable responses to the events and circumstances of any given day. All of these feelings, though, when we give them power and let them control our heart and mind, and our relationships and actions, are antithetical to happiness -- both our own happiness and the happiness of others.
Gratitude, though, if we choose it as our spiritual home, our default mode, and our conscious base to which we always return, is key to our emotional and spiritual well-being, and our ability to live in ways that serve the well-being of others and of the Earth.
I wonder, though, how real gratitude is nurtured and maintained. The kind of gratitude that is not just a response to good fortune and blessing ("Gee, thanks! You shouldn't have. But I'm so glad you did! I'm really so blessed!), but is a choice to see and to celebrate the constant blessing in and of life itself, no matter what.
We all have heard or read stories of people who live with that kind of gratitude -- the cancer patient who lives with deep and joy-filled thanks for each day, a person who hits bottom and gives honest thanks for the landing, someone living in third-world poverty who at the drop of a hat shares and gives away all they have just for the joy of it.
I assume that's kind of what gratitude looks like.
I also know it's not always the story of me. Not what I see every day when I look in the mirror. More often than is good for me, what I see there are some of those other things. Yeah, I mean fear, anxiety, insecurity, lack of trust, anger ... do you really need me to name more?
So I wonder, if gratitude is the heart of real human being, of honest spirituality, and of sustained well-being for myself and others around me, what kind of CPR can I perform to kick-start my heart?
What do you do, if you ever feel a need to live a little more gratefully? What are some of your ways to revive your heart-beat of deep gratitude?
