Time and time again

I give thanks that if you keep practising gratitude you can get better at it! Sometimes it may feel as if your burgeoning skill is all you have to be grateful for, but you know what, it still is something wonderful when you remember and feel it.

Last night, physically uncomfortable and emotionally so sad, I remembered to be grateful my bed was comfy even if I was not, and that my earplugs dulled the sound of people nearby being happier...but not so much that I couldn't catch an aural whiff of owls hooting in the trees and whip them out to enjoy the pure joy of that. I give thanks for those magical moments when you just lose all sense of yourself to delight...like I do when I hear owls...or see the sweep of the bay...or spring buds in a shower...moments that money can't buy and you don't have to rely on anyone else to supply (for which I'm extra grateful given my circumstances of course!)

I give thanks for all the good thinking I've done in the many sorrowful solitary hours of my already more than half a million hours long life. I wouldn't have chosen so much of what has happened to me, but if I had my time again...? Blooming heck, of course I wouldn't choose it again...are you insane? But with hindsight I can see the insights gained have been useful...and I wouldn't want to lose the appreciation of minutiae those with more magnificent existences might miss...

Apart from that I give thanks for just another day, like so many other just another days that pass, unremarkable at first glance, unmemorable looking back, trying to hang on to the health and wealth as you started with, and be at least as much wiser as you are older by its end. Trying to be OK with things, be understanding and kind and giving... including to yourself, which is tricky as so often what you think would be best for you to receive doesn't match with what others think would be best for them to offer...and we all want our own way...and to be right...right?

I give thanks for the way the knitters fell upon my big bag of unwanted yarns with glee and almost emptied it...for the way the sea insisted I abandoned the town to come and watch its wonderful waviness. I give thanks for the man waiting for the woman to get off the long distance coach with a big hug and a single wrapped up flower...and for the man carrying a bag of plaster into the downstairs flat answering my joking 'I've a kitchen ceiling wants painting when you've done that!' with a not joking 'OK, I'll come and have a look tomorrow if you like!'