1. warmly or deeply appreciative of kindness or benefits received;
thankful
2. expressing or actuated by gratitude
3. pleasing to the mind or senses; agreeable or welcome;
refreshing
Gratitude is the quality or feeling of gratefulness.
But gratitude isn’t limited to these definitions. It is not just
a response to something pleasing, welcome, or agreeable. It is not just an
expression based on kindness received.
Because gratitude is more grown up than that. It’s simple to
appreciate what we like. The reason gratitude is best served through a daily
practice is because it wants us to appreciate even that which is not so
pleasing, friendly, or welcome as a cool breeze on a hot day. Gratitude asks us
to move beyond reflex, to become – instead, reflexive; this takes practice.
Mature gratitude invites us to thank the 65-mile-per-hour winds
when we are fasting in the desert with no shelter. To wake up from anesthetic
with a whisper of gratitude on our lips for being “in good hands in a quiet,
healing place” (which my dear, wise - grateful - friend actually wrote to me
yesterday after surgery). To look at what we do not want but which has shown up for us, and to say with ease “thank
you.”
Mainstream lexicons insist that gratitude is conditional. That
gratitude only exists when things are resolved or easy. That gratitude stands
over here and waves across the expanse to all that it favors over there.
It is none of these, at least in its fully-fledged, adult,
incorporated form. Gratitude is a choice. It is how we endure all the moments
of life, pleasant or uncomfortable…knowing, always, that we choose how we are
with the world, even when the world doesn’t give us what we think we want.
Gratitude is a conveyance for the journey. It does not reside
solely within. Neither does it rely on the outer world in order to exist.
It is a bridge that spans the gap between inner and outer,
between the heart and the material world. The pathway of gratitude is a
dynamic, fluid one, carrying us through life in a state of equanimity. It is a
way, an attitude, an action…
All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2015 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."
