Attitudes of Gratitude

Some of the things I currently don't have include:

• A puppy (you are sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo lucky, Wendi!)
• A house or TV as big as Phi's or a patio-yard with pretty flowers (some of us were at his 4-bedroom Natomas mansion the other night):

It may be weird to photograph someone's bathroom, but when it is as big as your living room, I think it is warranted. This is only half of it! The attached walk-in-closet is bigger than my bedroom!

• A Vietnamese Mom who makes me eggrolls to keep in the freezer until it is convenient to fry them.
  
• Good financial sense. I attended a seminar yesterday on "Understanding your investment options" (i.e. Retirement for Retards), and actually did learn quite a bit, which is good. However, I think I'm still severely investment-impaired. I am going to attempt to, tonight, get on the Fidelity website and move my withheld money from the low-interest-yielding UC Davis Savings Fund to something like a "Freedom Fund," a blend of stocks and bonds which is a way to invest some money based on your projected retirement age. But I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Money shmoney. Don't want to deal with it. Wish someone else would manage it/tell me what to do.

Anyway, what this post IS about is being happy and grateful for what you have. It stems from a cute little book, Attitudes of Gratitude by M.J. Ryan, which I bought recently at Barnes and Noble, just read, and which has some really great points and quotes that struck me as relevant to my life. I will share some of them here:

It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at the moment, we expected some other good. -C.S. Lewis

Ryan writes about how despair is created bt the imagination looks towards the future and predicts millions of outcomes (none of which we can control). She then explains that gratitude is about the present: "While we can be thankful for past blessings and hope for future ones, when we feel gratefulness, we are usually contemplating some present circumstance. Our focus moves away from all that we or others did or failed to do in the past, or what we hope or worry for about in the future, and we find oursleves placed squarely in this precious moment, this experience that will never happen again."

If you haven't got all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want. -Anonymous

Gratitude creates openheartedness, which takes courage. She writes, "It requires that we we can put aside our self-protectiveness-- that stance that says 'I am not going to be grateful for what I am receiving right now because it's too scary to risk getting hurt'--and take a leap of faith to acknowledge that we have received a gift. Are we willing to risk, over and over, having our hearts broken open to the beauty and the pain of all that is ours to experience?"

I think the answer should be yes.

Ryan writes, "Forgiveness leads to gratitude, and not just gratitude in general but, in a beautifully healing movement, to an outpouring of appreciation for the very things that caused such pain in the first place. Thus is our suffering redeemed."

I am a big proponent of forgiveness.

She also explains how gratitude can cure perfectionism, which is derived from a sense of inadequacy and lack, by making us feel that life is full and acceptable just the way that it is. I really needed to hear that.

If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never truly be fulfilled.
If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself.
Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
- Lao Tzu

She writes about how gratitude is an attitude, and how it is really up to you to determine how you deal with life's disappointments.

Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy. - Milton Erickson, M.D.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances...
-Victor Frankl

Your future depends on many things, but mostly on you. -Frank Tyger

One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. -Henry Miller

It is all about the journey:

It's good to have an end to journey toward; but it's the journey that matters, in the end. -Ursula LeGuin

If there is to be any peace at all, it will be through being, not having. -Henry Miller

And some lasting thoughts:

Joy is prayer.
Joy is strength.
Joy is love.
Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
She gives most who gives with joy.
-Mother Teresa

The more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in will be. -Shakti Gawain

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.
It turns what we have into enough, and more.
It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion to clarity...
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. - Melody Beattie

As you wander on through life, sister/brother, whatever be your goal, keep your eye upon the donut, and not upon the hole.
-Sign in the Mayflower Coffee Shop, Chicago

Although I'm not a big donut-eater, I'll keep this in mind :) Hope you do, too.