In the past few days, I have come across a small buzz on Facebook and in conversation with women sharing the word they have chosen to guide this new year. So, in place of doomed to fail New Year's resolutions, I have chosen a word.
Grateful.
Gratitude banged around my head a bit, but it wasn't quite right. Gratitude is a virtue, but I was looking for more action in my word. So, grateful moved the virtue into a state of being, an active state, an active decision.
During a handful of phone conversations I had with my mother, before Alzheimer's stole those moments completely, she often spoke of being grateful. Grateful for her wonderful husband (she said that often), grateful that they had enough, enough to eat, enough to live; enough. I was struck by that because, after all, she was in the grip of a terrible disease, and yet, she was grateful.
I must remember that.
In the years between my mother's death and my father's stroke, my father and I spoke often of how fortunate we each were to have been loved by a spouse who thought we were wonderful. My father recognized these precious qualities in my husband, and that's a pretty good nod from a father-in-law.
Every evening before we fall asleep, my husband thanks me for a lovely dinner, whether I spent real time preparing it, or we had Chinese take-out or even if he cooked (another thing to be grateful for, I married a great cook). When the meal was particularly pedestrian, I laugh, and he responds that he is thanking me because we shared the meal.
How fortunate am I? I cannot possibly calculate that answer.
So instead of counting blessings which stretch out before me and behind me and surround me in every direction. I hope to begin each day with a grateful heart.
Now, before you think I'm auditioning to be Little Mary Sunshine, this word chose me, so to speak, because I need an anti-dote to the creeping hold of ugly vices such as resentment and envy and perhaps greed. (Throw in a little sloth and there's a more complete picture of me.)
They are not called deadly sins for nothing.
If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice. — Meister Eckhart (1260-1329)
November is a melancholy month. We are urged to remember, not only by holiday sentiment, but by nature itself, all the people and events not only of the past year but of our lives.
There is something in the air in November, the turning leaves, the cooler days that turn us inward. Nature asking us to stop between the heat and the coming cold to reflect, to both cherish and regret, and if regretting, to correct.