“Just an observation: it is impossible to be both grateful and depressed. Those with a grateful mindset tend to see the message in the mess. And even though life may knock them down, the grateful find reasons, if even small ones, to get up.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
image courtesy of charadestyle.com
To say the past few days have been a trial would be an understatement. Why has it been a trial? I could start to list all the things I’ve perceived as being wrong, made me unhappy, not gone the way I wanted them to or cannot see how things are going to be the way I want them to be in the future. Will this make them any different? An easy answer – no, it most definitely will not. Why? For the simple reason that it will not change any of them, for all of them are now in the past, if only just.
All the texts I’ve seen have stressed that the way forward, the way to make the most of the day you have, is to be grateful for the small things you have. So what happens when the “attitude of gratitude” seems to have flowed out of the “hole in your bucket?” If you follow the lyrics to this little song you are led in a circuitous ditty back to the beginning again, which is of no value to anyone at all. Perhaps the analogy is that you cannot fix what has already been broken. If one adopts that premise then the struggle to fix the broken, meaning whatever happened in the past to cause the unsettled or upset feelings, becomes, all at once becomes superfluous, waste of time. It is an exercise in aimless stupidity.
Is this what life is all about? Is it the meaningless day by day trial of trying to make ends meet, watching the paperwork mount up because you haven’t the heart or will power to get in there and get it sorted out? Is it the wish that you simply don’t wake up this morning so the dreadful reality of the barrenness of your day cannot tear the heart and soul out of you yet again?
image courtesy of theage.com.au
No, I don’t think so, I can’t think so, I refuse to believe it is so! I refuse to accept this as my reality! I may feel that I am simply plodding round an endless spiral, going nowhere and achieving nothing, but that is not my reality, not any longer! It has been an aberrant thought which has crept past my defences, wormed its way past my reality of gratitude for the endless things which are occurring continuously in my life, day by day, all day and every day. The reality may be that I am working my way through a tedious maze. Yet the maze has a beginning and an end. Curious that the end is the centre of the maze, the centre of all things. Interesting.
So, I may feel that life has beaten me down, I may find it difficult if not almost impossible for a time to see the wonders around me. I may feel that life has used a great big stick and had a really good time thumping me with it, but I am still standing. I’ve managed to get back up, starred the blackness of despair in the face and yelled “Begone you woeful waste of space, let my sunshine back in NOW! I want my sense of gratitude back in place RIGHT NOW!” OK, so I’ve picked a day when it’s overcast and looks like rain. That’s OK too. In fact hearing the rain thrumming on my roof, smelling the scent of wet dirt and freshly mown grass will be sweet nectar to my overburdened heart.
image courtesy of rajdeeppaulus.com
In fact it will be truly healing. Perhaps the healing I’m searching for and not the information that I have this wrong or that wrong, but it’s ok now, until the next time and there is something else to be found. It’s finding that if “friends are flowers in the garden of life” , well my garden is bare since I don’t have any… flowers or friends. My garden is bare. It’s coming to terms with the fact that my family has lost its way since my mother passed away and we seem to have lost the glue which held us together. I’m not sure IF I can fix it or IF I am meant to try to fix it. Perhaps it is also part of the change necessary for me to grow.
So for now, when it’s a tough row to hoe, I am concentrating on the small things, the simple things. The sound of the baby birds in the trees around my garden.
Beautiful and shy Koel making a home in my garden.
The appearance of shy native birds who like my garden as a place to call home. The Buff Banded Rail who is still shy and in hiding since the Magpies chase him unmercifully. The Kookaburras, Pee Wits, Butcher birds and Magpies who sit on my balcony and tilt their heads as I talk to them. I am surrounded by life and am grateful for their presence and company. I am grateful for the Nikon my husband bought me because I can take photos of my visitors, perhaps not brilliant photos but they are blessings for me.
So if I start to think about “Gratitude When the World goes to Hell in a Casket” I will look at my photos and think of my small blessings – with heaps of gratitude.
Buff Banded Rail shyly looking for Magpies as he crosses the garden
Butcher bird sharing my early morning balcony.
Kookaburra checking out the landscape.
“If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”
― James Herriot
I recently received a beautiful surprise, a terrific burgundy Nikon P510 with a marvelous zoom lens for close up shots. I should explain that I had a perfectly good “point and shoot” camera which I had used as I travelled throughout the Middle East and Switzerland,taking some memorable pictures which I am quite proud of. So the appearance of this new camera was more than just a little surprise.
It may not look much but when you’ve been standing, arms akimbo and the tremble has begun to shake the camera around like a flea looking for a meal on a hot summer’s day, you begin to appreciate how difficult it is to get a bird to play ball with you! The hysterial laughter s I tried to get a bird in flight was just the tonic we all needed. The blur was indistinguishable and deleted after the laughter subside. Next, in came the pair of wood ducks we think are nesting near the creek. They are so flighty I almost stopped breathing so I woudn’t scare them away. However, the instructions continued and I managed to capture this….
I’m told it can be much worse, I know it can because I did it later.
