This is such a timely topic for me. See, my sister is in town visiting. For a while. And things have been interesting. She's not "used" to life back "home" anymore. In her mind, everything here should be the same, despite the fact that she hasn't called "here" "home" in over five years.
She was very disappointed that the world continued to move, that people continued on with their lives, and that people weren't catering to her. Which led to temper tantrums. Yes, from an adult.
What does this have to do with gratitude? Well, these days? My sister is the perfect example for "anti-gratitude" which is so not fun to be around. We go out to dinner? She hates the restaurant. She gets to pick the restaurant? She thinks it's over priced and wants to eat at home. All she has done, essentially for the past five days straight, is complain.
Her behavior reminds me of what I don't want to be like. It reminds me of what may happen to me, if I choose to stop working as hard as I've been in life. If I were to quit therapy, quit with my recovery, quit with everything except for going to work, I'd be very ungrateful. I'd become a complainer, too. Well, maybe not, cause it's just not in my nature to outwardly complain, but, you get the idea.
I am so grateful for so many things in my world. My therapist, my dietitian, my doctor, my whole treatment team, actually. I'm grateful for the Pup. I'm grateful for my home, even if it isn't the "perfect" home, it's works well for me. I'm grateful for my job, even if the stuff that goes on outside my classroom is very unpleasant, inside my room, with my students? Awesome stuff happens and for that I'm grateful. I'm grateful for chocolates, I love the sweet treat. I'm grateful for my friends - few but mighty. I'm grateful for the gift of blogging, and for my readers. I'm grateful for clean air to breathe, even if some days, I'd rather bury my head in a pillow.
There's a lot to be grateful for, if gratitude is what you're looking to find.......
Such a lovely post, Violeta. When you're consciously striving to find the positive, I always find that one of the effects is beginning to notice how little a lot of other people do the same - in fact, how sometimes they seem to go out of their way to do the opposite - to nitpick, to find the grit in the pearl.
ReplyDeleteIt says such a lot about you as an individual that you haven't let yourself get sucked into the whirlpool of that negativity (which is easy), but have instead chosen to view your negative surroundings (and it sounds like situation is temporary, thank goodness!) as an encouragement to keep going as you are, keep embracing the positives, even if some days they're harder to find, and it would be easy to sit back and complain about everything that's wrong with our lives. Good for you, I say. And a good little bit of inspiration for anyone who reads this post xx