One year - and seemingly forever – ago, I posted on this blog a piece about a gratefulness practice that I had engaged every day of 2019. It culminated in a New Year’s Eve ritual that included reviewing each one of the three hundred and sixty-five entries from my calendar: those things which I daily recorded as my specific gratitudes.
I had never extended my gratefulness practice this far before.
By New Year’s Day 2020, I was committed to going through another year in such a way: a simple everyday activity that would flourish on the last day of the year in one huge wintry blossom of gratitude.
Small steps each day – taking a moment to reflect on the waking hours and then recording them on my calendar. On the last day of each month, I copied these into a document which got filed into my annual gratitude folder of my “Spiritual” set of writings.
I really didn’t know early in January what the world would face for the remainder of that year – 2020 – and into this next one. But I had set my intention and so off I went – down Gratitude Road – at the end of each day of this past year. Most days I was so happy to pause and look around for a reason to be thankful:
Breath flowing easily in and out of my lungs
A safe home
Loving family
Nature’s beauty
Economic stability
Caring friends
Satisfying and productive work days with clients and colleagues
Each of those things I just listed are generalities; what actually appeared on my daily lists were always very specific …
Laughing with my brother
This sister’s generosity of spirit
That sister’s ability to open-heartedly listen
The “I love you” from another beloved (on a very particular day when I most needed it)
Such-and-such’s (a friend) deep caring during our Zoom lunch date
(All of these people are actually named in my private “grat notes.”)
And the everyday yet miraculous wonders of nature for which I expressed gratitude ranged from:
being able to watch a particular nest of a certain species of bird in my yard, thanking Spirit for each new egg, each chirping nestling, every growing bird, and the blessing of watching their very first fledge-flight, to
which houseplants bloomed in vibrant color, to
which trees began to leaf out and when, to
owl sightings, coyote visitations, fresh bear scat aplenty,
nuances of sky, light, weather
… each described in great detail in my lists …
… except for one, “health,” that appeared - with only about four exceptions – on every single day’s entry from mid-March through the end of the year (and which is now creeping onto this year’s couple-of-weeks-so-far entries).
By New Year’s Eve 2020 I was, admittedly, weary. I was not sure I had the stamina to read through a list that contained between twelve hundred and eighteen hundred entries. But I did it anyway, to honor the ritual. It took a long while, with several interruptions, but I managed to read, to remember, and to find thankfulness anew at the abundance of love and kindness and beauty that prevail even amidst a year (-plus) of grand difficulty, disruption, hurt, and death.
I created an altar from nature’s beauty after I completed reading the year’s gratitude entries.
I’m on it for this year, too – the beginning of my third year doing a daily thing that leads to a year-end thing: a focus on gratefulness.
What interests me now as I compose this blog post is how I began this hearty practice just weeks after my mom’s death; I persevered through the first year of this practice while my family and I moved through all of the bereavement and logistical details associated with such a loss. The second year I did this ritual was 2020 – rife with the pandemic, economic collapse, escalating tensions around social justice inequities, a near total shut-off (in our household) of in-person socializing, political upheavals. This is a reminder that gratitude is not conditional.
I am so glad to be committed to this gratefulness path again for 2021.
