“Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.” – Rumi
I read this excerpt from Lynne Twist’s book The Soul of Money and instantly identified with it:
“For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is ‘I didn’t get enough sleep.’ The next one is ‘I don’t have enough time.’ Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of…. We don’t have enough exercise. We don’t have enough work. We don’t have enough profits. We don’t have enough power. We don’t have enough wilderness. We don’t have enough weekends. Of course, we don’t have enough money – ever. We’re not thin enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not pretty enough or fit enough or educated or successful enough, or rich enough – ever.
“Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds race with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thought and wake up to the reverie of lack… What begins as a simple expression of the hurried life, or even the challenged life, grows into the great justifications for an unfulfilled life.“
The one component that feels so scarce right now is me-time, time when I want to do what I want to do. Between having 2 young kids, working and trying to keep some order in the house that gets ripped into pieces every day as we are all stuck in here during the pandemic, I think it’s probably factually correct to say that my discretionary free-time is at an all-time low. BUT as I read the passage above, I realized that I don’t have to grieve that fact every day.
Lynne Twist, the author of the passage above, suggests we can believe that we are enough. Brene Brown, the University of Houston researcher who excerpted the passage above in her book The Gifts of Imperfection finds that her research shows practicing gratitude is what creates joy in our lives, no matter the circumstances. And she suggests that gratitude isn’t a passive thing that you espouse but something that truly needs to be practiced – like the piano.
It’s funny how easy it is to see in my own life once someone points it out to me. And I can see that my attitude of gratitude or belief that I’m enough can affect the lives of my children intimately. Because I have these years when they are young and still at home with me, even if it’s a little longer because of the pandemic, to set the tone by which they receive the world. In this week of Thanksgiving, it is such a perfect time to start some lasting traditions of naming the things we are grateful for every day.
Surprised By Joy 