Day 25 - Gratitude

I'm working on a post about gratitude - I have a lot of it, but the hour is late once again, these 45 mile commutes are tough, so I'll save it for later and give you instead a wonderful letter from an old friend I recently reconnected with in Iowa.

Dear friends, Family, visionaries, stalkers, wiseguys, seekers & beatniks (and everyone else) ~

I LOVE Thanksgiving because it is the day officially celebrating gratitude. How satisfying is that? For me, hugely so.

Now I could take the political spin on Thanksgiving's origins and deconstruct the revisionist history that still stains our moral and societal culture but I am going in a more macro direction.

Gratitude is a very powerful state of grace. Instead of focusing on what you don't have or what is wrong or missing in your life, try saying or writing a list of everything that is righteous. Understand I am using that word in a more colloquial fashion.

Every night before nodding off, I do the list. Sometimes during the day when I am stuck in traffic or waiting in line at the grocer's, I do the list. Sometimes when my foot in giving me pain and I am fighting impulse to feel like a victim, I do the list. When I am feeling lazy or ineffectual.....you get my drift.

I promise you this: If this is not a practice you have tried, please give it a whirl because I know you will feel greater peace, lower your anxiety, decrease your depression, feel more compassionate toward others AND yourself, feel healthier, smile more and be able to listen to Kenny G without grimacing (oh, sorry, that's just my issue).

It's all about perspective my friends. We live lives of enormous richness and comfort. In so many ways. If you have any doubts about that, let's take a trip somewhere where life is more marginal. We don't even have to leave the US.

So enjoy your day. And know that one thing I am so very grateful for is your fabulous friendship! You all bring me joy, teach me things, prompt me to expand my consciousness (mostly without the use of pharmaceuticals and/or botanicals), harrague me politically, delight me remembering things we have shared that I have forgotten and being there for me when I need help or just a pal.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

your pal, sal


Fear's the way we die. It's not a right. It's not productive. It doesn't really protect us at all. Let it go. Fear diminishes every particle of our being. Let it go.
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William Faulkner wrote that the past is not dead; it's not even past. (As recovery on the Gulf Coast continues, Faulkner's words are perfectly apt).
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Check out my blog: www.queenoftheplayground.blogspot.com.