Post by Blu on Mar 17, 2008 1:47:09 GMT -5
Chapter 3 – Part 3 of 3 – THE ATTITUDES – by M.J. Ryan
THE TIME IS NOW ~~ We can spend a whole lifetime enjoying various benefits and not appreciate their value until we are deprived of them. How many lovers bodly contemplate separation, fondly imagining that they have had enough of the beloved. And yet as soon as they actually experience separation, they burn up with longing. ~~ Jami
Boy, do I recognize myself in Sufi Jami’s quote! Retroactive gratitude I call it ~~ realizing after something is over or someone is gone that I really appreciated what I had, but wasn’t aware of it until it was gone. Good health, the smile of a loved one, a job that allowed for creativity and self-expression ~~ the list of what we might have taken for granted is endless.
Failing to appreciate what we had until it’s ‘too late’ leads to regret, one of the most insidious negative feelings there is. Regret is a poison that keeps us in the past: If only I had told him more often I was thankful for all he gave me, maybe he would not have left me, if only I had been more appreciative of my legs before I got hit by the car; if only I had told her how much her kind words meant to me . . if only, if only. Our minds spin around, creating story upon story of how life could have been better if we had taken less for granted.
Whenever I find myself swirling around in a fog of retroactive gratitude, I do two things. First, I take time to consciously thank the person or thing I have belatedly discovered my gratitude for. If the person is alive, I thank them via letter or phone call. If not, I send a mental thanks, as I do for a situation I am grateful for. Second, I take a hard look at my current life, at the things I might be taking for granted right now.
While we can never know if being grateful in the moment would have created a different outcome ~~ maybe he wouldn’t have left if you had nagged less and been more grateful, but then again, maybe not ~~ what is for sure is that the more we give thanks now for what we do have, the fewer regrets we will have in the future, no matter what happens. Maybe you can’t tell your sister who just died how grateful you were for her presence in your life, but right now you can tell your husband, your child, and your best friend what they mean to you.
Let the fact of our regret send us into the world with ever more appreciation for the gifts we have been given, and a commitment to communicate that appreciation as often as possible.
THE JOY of LIVING ~~ It was then I learned that gratitude is the best feeling I would ever have, the ultimate joy of living. It was better than sex, better than winning the lottery, better than watching your daughter graduate from college, better and deeper than any other feeling; it is perhaps the genesis of all other really good feelings in the human repertoire. ~~ Lewis Smedes, After Almost Dying
In A Pretty Good Person, Lewis Smedes, a professor of theology and ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, tells the story of collapsing in his Minnesota apartment on a ‘frightfully’ cold December morning.
“My lungs it turned out, had been spattered by a buckshot of blood clots; and for a couple of days at the hospital I tilted in death’s direction. On the fourth day a benign Norwegian physician by the name of Hans Engman leaned over my bed and congratulated me on surviving the twenty-to-one odds that medical statistics had stacked up against me.
“A couple of nights later ~~ in the moody hush that settles on a hospital room at two o’clock in the morning, alone, with no drugs in me to set me up for it ~~ I was seized with a frenzy of gratitude . . . I blessed the Lord above for the almost unbearable goodness of being alive on this good earth in this good body at this present time.”
In doing research for this book, it was amazing to me how many people related a similar story ~~ that it took a brush with death to awaken them to a sense of gratitude. I read about how car accidents, cancer experiences, boating mishaps, and other life-threatening difficulties were wake-up calls to live with more thankfulness for the ordinary things of life. These weren’t intellectual decisions; rather, each person was overwhelmed with a tremendous feeling of gratitude, as Lewis Smedes describes, and from that feeling made a pledge to cultivate gratefulness on a daily basis.
My question is this: Do you need to almost die to experience the joy available in this moment? Or is it possible, right now, to tap into the amazingly wonderful fact that you are alive, breathing in and breathing out, able to take in the world through your senses, able to smile to a stranger, caress a loved one, touch the soft down of a baby’s cheek? We do not need to almost die to feel the wonderful warm bath of gratitude. In any moment, we can experience the world as new again, and touch the joyful ecstasy those who have gone through near-death experiences relate.
Think for a moment of something you almost lost but didn’t ~~ a friend in an argument, your car that was stolen but then abandoned, a breast, your life. Does your heart naturally swell in thanksgiving for their continued presence in your life?
AN EVER-INCREASING SPIRAL ~~ As I express my gratitude, I become more deeply aware of it. And the greater my awareness, the greater my need to express it. What happens here is a spiraling ascent, a process of growth in ever expanding circles around a steady center. ~~ Brother David Steindl-Rast
“My Russian grandmother was my greatest teacher in gratitude,” a coworker recently told me. “We were very poor and I often would complain about not having this or that. Any time we went anywhere, she would use whatever happened as a lesson in giving thanks. We’d walk down the streets of New York and see a man without legs begging for food, and she would say, ‘ Now you send up a prayer right now to God thanking Him for your legs and for the food in your belly.’ She wouldn’t do it to feel superior to the man or to make me feel guilty, but to teach me that around us every day are ways to remind ourselves of the bounty we have, no matter what our circumstances, and the more we give thanks, the more likely it is that the blessings will continue. For years in my adolescence, I rejected her teaching. But lately I’ve begun to notice that the more I give thanks, the better my life goes. When I become ungrateful, things tend to fall apart.”
A lot of the recent writing on gratitude makes it sound like some kind of insurance policy, as if the reason to feel grateful is to make sure that good things will continue to come our way. That feels spiritually materialistic to me, like praying for a pink Cadillac or a mink stole. True gratitude is a natural response to the miracle of life as we experience it moment to moment, a sense of abundance from the heart that is independent of our desires for the future.
That said, it does seem to be true that whatever we focus on tends to increase. Have you ever noticed that if you learn a new word you suddenly hear it everywhere? Or your friend introduces you to blue lobelia and you suddenly notice it blooming all over?
Exactly why this happens is something of a mystery, but I believe it’s because everything is around us all the time. We are choosing, mostly unconsciously, to notice certain things and not others because we just cannot pay attention to everything. As we change what we pay attention to, we notice that more. Scientists have proposed that something more amazing is at work ~~ that reality is open to the mind’s casual influence and is, in the words of David L. Coooperider, ‘often profoundly created through our anticipatory images, values, plans, intentions, beliefs and the like’. This suggests that we actually participate in creating what happens to us by the power of our positive or negative imagery.
In either case, the move we are grateful, the more we will have to be grateful for. Even if nothing more or better happens, our eyes are opened to the gifts that were always there. As Susan Jeffers notes, ‘When we focus on abundance, our life feels abundant, when we focus on lack, our life feels lacking. It is purely a matter of focus.’
START WHERE YOU ARE ~~ 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
Sometimes we are in such a negative state that the only way we can connect to a sense of gratefulness is to count all the bad things that aren’t happening to us: well, the dog didn’t get hit by a car today. I don‘t have Alzheimer’s yet; my kid didn’t pierce her nose today; and earthquake didn’t strike.
Counting blessings that are blessings by virtue of their not having stuck, the more outrageous the better, is a great mood-elevator. By the time you recite your list to a loved one or friend, you should be feeling a whole lot better.
But there is a serious aspect to this as well. When you really think about it, isn’t it wonderful that the tornado didn’t strike? Isn’t it great that the house didn’t burn down? (It’s a real possibility. Three of my closest friends have had their homes or businesses burn to the ground.) Sometimes we need to look at what hasn’t befallen us to wake ourselves up to the joys of our ordinary life.
Often we arrive at this place by hearing about the misfortunes of others, “Oh, thank God it wasn’t my child in that car crash”, “I’m so grateful that it’s not my husband who’s losing his job”, “Think of all those poor people who lost their homes.” Such reactions are human nature, I suppose, and yet it would be wonderful if we didn’t need the sorrows of other people to remind us of the blessings in our own lives. Rather, if we consciously count our blessings on a daily basis, including those that are blessings by virtue of their not happening, instead of experiencing a sense of grateful relief when we hear about someone else’s misfortune perhaps we will be spurred into the action that comes from an awakened sense of compassion.
THE TIME IS NOW ~~ We can spend a whole lifetime enjoying various benefits and not appreciate their value until we are deprived of them. How many lovers bodly contemplate separation, fondly imagining that they have had enough of the beloved. And yet as soon as they actually experience separation, they burn up with longing. ~~ Jami
Boy, do I recognize myself in Sufi Jami’s quote! Retroactive gratitude I call it ~~ realizing after something is over or someone is gone that I really appreciated what I had, but wasn’t aware of it until it was gone. Good health, the smile of a loved one, a job that allowed for creativity and self-expression ~~ the list of what we might have taken for granted is endless.
Failing to appreciate what we had until it’s ‘too late’ leads to regret, one of the most insidious negative feelings there is. Regret is a poison that keeps us in the past: If only I had told him more often I was thankful for all he gave me, maybe he would not have left me, if only I had been more appreciative of my legs before I got hit by the car; if only I had told her how much her kind words meant to me . . if only, if only. Our minds spin around, creating story upon story of how life could have been better if we had taken less for granted.
Whenever I find myself swirling around in a fog of retroactive gratitude, I do two things. First, I take time to consciously thank the person or thing I have belatedly discovered my gratitude for. If the person is alive, I thank them via letter or phone call. If not, I send a mental thanks, as I do for a situation I am grateful for. Second, I take a hard look at my current life, at the things I might be taking for granted right now.
While we can never know if being grateful in the moment would have created a different outcome ~~ maybe he wouldn’t have left if you had nagged less and been more grateful, but then again, maybe not ~~ what is for sure is that the more we give thanks now for what we do have, the fewer regrets we will have in the future, no matter what happens. Maybe you can’t tell your sister who just died how grateful you were for her presence in your life, but right now you can tell your husband, your child, and your best friend what they mean to you.
Let the fact of our regret send us into the world with ever more appreciation for the gifts we have been given, and a commitment to communicate that appreciation as often as possible.
THE JOY of LIVING ~~ It was then I learned that gratitude is the best feeling I would ever have, the ultimate joy of living. It was better than sex, better than winning the lottery, better than watching your daughter graduate from college, better and deeper than any other feeling; it is perhaps the genesis of all other really good feelings in the human repertoire. ~~ Lewis Smedes, After Almost Dying
In A Pretty Good Person, Lewis Smedes, a professor of theology and ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, tells the story of collapsing in his Minnesota apartment on a ‘frightfully’ cold December morning.
“My lungs it turned out, had been spattered by a buckshot of blood clots; and for a couple of days at the hospital I tilted in death’s direction. On the fourth day a benign Norwegian physician by the name of Hans Engman leaned over my bed and congratulated me on surviving the twenty-to-one odds that medical statistics had stacked up against me.
“A couple of nights later ~~ in the moody hush that settles on a hospital room at two o’clock in the morning, alone, with no drugs in me to set me up for it ~~ I was seized with a frenzy of gratitude . . . I blessed the Lord above for the almost unbearable goodness of being alive on this good earth in this good body at this present time.”
In doing research for this book, it was amazing to me how many people related a similar story ~~ that it took a brush with death to awaken them to a sense of gratitude. I read about how car accidents, cancer experiences, boating mishaps, and other life-threatening difficulties were wake-up calls to live with more thankfulness for the ordinary things of life. These weren’t intellectual decisions; rather, each person was overwhelmed with a tremendous feeling of gratitude, as Lewis Smedes describes, and from that feeling made a pledge to cultivate gratefulness on a daily basis.
My question is this: Do you need to almost die to experience the joy available in this moment? Or is it possible, right now, to tap into the amazingly wonderful fact that you are alive, breathing in and breathing out, able to take in the world through your senses, able to smile to a stranger, caress a loved one, touch the soft down of a baby’s cheek? We do not need to almost die to feel the wonderful warm bath of gratitude. In any moment, we can experience the world as new again, and touch the joyful ecstasy those who have gone through near-death experiences relate.
Think for a moment of something you almost lost but didn’t ~~ a friend in an argument, your car that was stolen but then abandoned, a breast, your life. Does your heart naturally swell in thanksgiving for their continued presence in your life?
AN EVER-INCREASING SPIRAL ~~ As I express my gratitude, I become more deeply aware of it. And the greater my awareness, the greater my need to express it. What happens here is a spiraling ascent, a process of growth in ever expanding circles around a steady center. ~~ Brother David Steindl-Rast
“My Russian grandmother was my greatest teacher in gratitude,” a coworker recently told me. “We were very poor and I often would complain about not having this or that. Any time we went anywhere, she would use whatever happened as a lesson in giving thanks. We’d walk down the streets of New York and see a man without legs begging for food, and she would say, ‘ Now you send up a prayer right now to God thanking Him for your legs and for the food in your belly.’ She wouldn’t do it to feel superior to the man or to make me feel guilty, but to teach me that around us every day are ways to remind ourselves of the bounty we have, no matter what our circumstances, and the more we give thanks, the more likely it is that the blessings will continue. For years in my adolescence, I rejected her teaching. But lately I’ve begun to notice that the more I give thanks, the better my life goes. When I become ungrateful, things tend to fall apart.”
A lot of the recent writing on gratitude makes it sound like some kind of insurance policy, as if the reason to feel grateful is to make sure that good things will continue to come our way. That feels spiritually materialistic to me, like praying for a pink Cadillac or a mink stole. True gratitude is a natural response to the miracle of life as we experience it moment to moment, a sense of abundance from the heart that is independent of our desires for the future.
That said, it does seem to be true that whatever we focus on tends to increase. Have you ever noticed that if you learn a new word you suddenly hear it everywhere? Or your friend introduces you to blue lobelia and you suddenly notice it blooming all over?
Exactly why this happens is something of a mystery, but I believe it’s because everything is around us all the time. We are choosing, mostly unconsciously, to notice certain things and not others because we just cannot pay attention to everything. As we change what we pay attention to, we notice that more. Scientists have proposed that something more amazing is at work ~~ that reality is open to the mind’s casual influence and is, in the words of David L. Coooperider, ‘often profoundly created through our anticipatory images, values, plans, intentions, beliefs and the like’. This suggests that we actually participate in creating what happens to us by the power of our positive or negative imagery.
In either case, the move we are grateful, the more we will have to be grateful for. Even if nothing more or better happens, our eyes are opened to the gifts that were always there. As Susan Jeffers notes, ‘When we focus on abundance, our life feels abundant, when we focus on lack, our life feels lacking. It is purely a matter of focus.’
START WHERE YOU ARE ~~ 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
Sometimes we are in such a negative state that the only way we can connect to a sense of gratefulness is to count all the bad things that aren’t happening to us: well, the dog didn’t get hit by a car today. I don‘t have Alzheimer’s yet; my kid didn’t pierce her nose today; and earthquake didn’t strike.
Counting blessings that are blessings by virtue of their not having stuck, the more outrageous the better, is a great mood-elevator. By the time you recite your list to a loved one or friend, you should be feeling a whole lot better.
But there is a serious aspect to this as well. When you really think about it, isn’t it wonderful that the tornado didn’t strike? Isn’t it great that the house didn’t burn down? (It’s a real possibility. Three of my closest friends have had their homes or businesses burn to the ground.) Sometimes we need to look at what hasn’t befallen us to wake ourselves up to the joys of our ordinary life.
Often we arrive at this place by hearing about the misfortunes of others, “Oh, thank God it wasn’t my child in that car crash”, “I’m so grateful that it’s not my husband who’s losing his job”, “Think of all those poor people who lost their homes.” Such reactions are human nature, I suppose, and yet it would be wonderful if we didn’t need the sorrows of other people to remind us of the blessings in our own lives. Rather, if we consciously count our blessings on a daily basis, including those that are blessings by virtue of their not happening, instead of experiencing a sense of grateful relief when we hear about someone else’s misfortune perhaps we will be spurred into the action that comes from an awakened sense of compassion.