Even when we’re not sure for what

“… the simplest and deepest way to make who we are at one with the world is through the kinship of gratitude. Nothing brings the worlds of spirit and earth together more quickly.

To be grateful means giving thanks for more than just the things we want, but also for the things that surmount our price and stubbornness…

Sometimes just giving thanks for the mystery of it all brings everything and everyone closer, the way suction pulls streams of water together. So take a chance and openly give thanks, even if you’re not sure what for, and feel the plenitude of all that is living brush up against your heart.”

~ Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

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It seems to me that the well of gratitude should be, rather easily, bottomless. It’s a pretty glorious ride, after all.

And yet…

Why is it that at the end of the day, when my little prompter asks me to recall just 3 or 4 things that I’m grateful for, I can struggle? Sure, there are days I could blow Google to bits with my endless thanks. But there are also days where that prompt slaps me, and I feel myself stretching. Grasping. For anything. How is it even possible?

Perspective can be a bitch. I know it’s all in where I’m sitting and what I can see from there, all in the films and filters I happen to have in front of me. But still… it can all be a bit much to clear away.

What I do know is that if I give myself the seven seconds to come up with something, literally anything–if I insist on being genuine in my lack of vision but also determined to see through my cracked and smudged lens–and dredge up something real*, if I do this one little practice, no matter what I’m feeling, then something inside me does open up. Just a little maybe, but a little is a lot, especially on the days of the shit-colored glasses.

* Sometimes that something it is nothing more than the mere fact of getting through the day and having a show to watch. The way the light hit the wall in the morning. Incandescent lighting. Why do these feel so small when they are in actuality enormous?

It’s Thanksgiving in America. A holiday fraught with historical horrors, a holiday that leaves some of us in worse existential shape than others. But if we can let go of all but the name and what that name means, is it not a truly beautiful thing that we have a widely-celebrated holiday–like a big one– in which the central purpose is gratitude?

Let’s let go the rest, just for a moment; let’s reclaim Thanksgiving for what it is and what it could be.

Let’s pull the streams closer together.

Let’s be grateful, even if we’re not sure for what.

Time to love louder.