I AM Grateful

I am grateful!                                                                                    February 28, 2015
   Around Thanksgiving time we look around seeking all the things and people we are thankful to call friends. What about the rest of the year? Can we be grateful, satisfied, fulfilled, yes, even happy and content when we do not have a delicious holiday to remind us? The recent issue of my Mayo Clinic newsletter has an article titled, “Fostering thankfulness”. It points out that practicing gratitude is good for us!

A study has indicated that those who have a predisposition toward thankfulness are less likely to be depressed, anxious, addicted to nicotine, alcohol and/or drugs. They are happier people. Why? Perhaps it is because they accept themselves, they do not react to peer pressure, instead, they learn to be content in the moment. This is another way to be open to mindfulness, another way to focus on living in the now.

A study of 400 people found that grateful people had less trouble falling asleep, slept better and stayed asleep. It certainly is true that when the mind is busy concentrating on those things and people, for whom we are grateful, it wanders into pleasant places, there is no room for negative thinking or anxiety.

When I have lonely moments, empty days that I have neglected to plan for, I think about the many wonderful moments, days and years I have experienced during my lifetime, I remember to be grateful. I am overwhelmed when I recall the good things in life that I have enjoyed. I grew up in a loving home even though peacefulness was often interrupted by childish disappointments and sibling disasters. When my parents were on the opposite sides of an issue, they kept their disagreements private. I do recall hearing, “not now, not in front of the children”. Instinctively I understood it was impossible for two people who lived together, to agree all the time. In fact, I learned early on that they were different; so I managed to make serious requests to the parent most likely to say “yes”.

I learned truth, flexibility and consistency from my Mom. She made it very clear when I was quite young, “If you lie to me, there will be harsh, severe punishment. If you tell the truth about something you did that was wrong, your punishment will be much less severe.” I learned that the hard way when “who spilled the perfume on my dresser” became an issue.

From my Dad I learned to love the outdoors, enjoy exercise, and the importance of integrity. Integrity is a major component of a good person. He used to quote Shakespeare so often that I learned the lines that Polonious spoke to his son, Laertes: “To thine own self be true, then it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” This constituted my Dad’s definition of integrity.

I remember the evening he locked himself in the bathroom and cried. Dad found some print slugs that he believed Ben had stolen from the school’s newspaper office. The thought that his son might be a thief caused Dad’s tears. It frightened me to see my steady, dependable Dad weep. When my brother hastily explained that he had “borrowed” them to experiment with them, he planned to return them, Dad simply said “tomorrow”.

Just as grateful as I am, and always will be, for my parents so my gratitude escalates beyond Heaven when I begin to think about my beloved Erv. The day we found each other was extraordinary. I am seriously grateful for the 62 years plus that we shared. Last night I experimented with “thankfulness” and I had the best night’s sleep I have enjoyed in a long time. There is no reason to save our “thankfulness” for the holiday of Thanksgving!