It’s impossible, literally impossible not to be grateful for SOMETHING.
Here’s what I mean.
We all know that we’re grateful for big things. This week alone, a colleague of mine learned that his 29-year-old niece had died after a long battle with cancer.
Then Dennis, the husband of my neighbor Janet, ( known to my friends as the Cat Lady), had a heart attack on Friday walking up his stairs.
So with a grateful collective sigh, we are all thankful their fate is not ours.
But. I am grateful for the infinitesimally smaller things as well.
Here are just three.
I went to put a plate away and it knocked into a cup that then wobbled over and fell—but I caught it. Not a big deal if it had fallen on the floor and broke, not the end of the world, but I would have had to sweep it up, vacuum it up and then wash the floor so no tiny shards remained. A bit of time I do not have! I was so thrilled to have caught it.
Last night, carrying plants outside to the backyard, for some reason I forgot that there was a step down out my backdoor and almost fell, face first into the slate and pebbles. I am sure I would have lived, albeit with some scrapes, but certainly would have been super sore. Grateful I am not waking up with a black and blue mark the size of Texas on my thigh!
Looking for my potato peeler, with my eyesight getting more laser like everyday, not! I bent closer to see into my silverware/utensils drawer. Didn’t see that an extremely sharp scissor was sticking straight out—if I would have bent down an inch closer in that direction…
So when you think about it—it’s almost impossible not to have a list of things that you’re grateful for. And the point is—realizing this keeps me anchored, so I don’t start on the slippery slope of morose griping which is quite easy to do. Looking around my office right now, I can moan about the mass of work yet to be done, the inflexibility of some of the people I deal with daily, the fact that an insane judge in Montana is putting some of the blame for the rape of a 14 year-old girl on the 14 year-old girl herself (who BTW subsequently killed herself!) OR– I can be grateful for my husband who is out doing some food shopping for tomorrow’s bar-b-q, for the cats who are keeping me company as I write, for the bag of malted milk balls at my fingertips, and always, really always, grateful for the possibilities of a new day.
