Friday, March 13, 2009

Gratitude Walks.


Facebook reconnected me with an old school friend last year. We didn't hang out much when we were at university. She was busy raising a young family, writing poetry and getting cum laude grades. I was busy raising hell, mostly. I always admired her but felt we lived in different worlds and I was too shy to strike up a conversation with her for fear of sounding stupid. Luisa is now a mother of 4, an associate professor of creative writing and other wondrous subjects at an American university, and continues to write the astonishingly beautiful poetry that is winning her awards at about the same rate I'm collecting love handles and extra chins. My old shyness with her is gone, and we've both discovered to our great delight that we walk large tracts of common ground together.

One day last November we were ruminating by e-mail on the things that draw us to wonder. I decided to tell her about my gratitude bowl. With a few minor alterations to reflect some changes in my life since then, this is what I wrote:

I have an old Igorot wooden bowl with a scalloped rim that holds a ragtag assortment of stones found on beach walks, some of Noodle's bright marbles, a few large, mysterious seeds from Cartagena, Colombia, two sanded glass eggs from a flea market, a small knob of polished turquoise, two tiny fossils from the Moroccan dessert, et cetera. I take everything out of the bowl, and try to put each item back one by one. For every stone/thing that makes it back into the bowl, I have to find something in my life today that I am grateful for. So for example: "Today I am grateful for my health, for the fact it's Saturday and I had a lie-in, for this beautiful Aran sweater that keeps me warm as we try to save on heating oil, for the damp stain on the ceiling because it means I have a roof over my head, for Mia snoring on her pillow, for Skunk and the laughter I share with him, for my dishwasher, for Luisa's poems and the places they take me to, for the back rub Skunk gave me last night that allowed me to sleep deeply, for the cold winter we had because it might mean fewer mosquitos this summer, for the still-warm pound cake in the kitchen that I am trying to ignore, for the kids squabbling upstairs because it means they're not arguing with me for a change, for the smell of this coffee, for the beautiful salt-glazed mug I'm drinking it in and the hands that made it, for the immense healing Jin Shin Jyutsu is bringing to all aspects of my being, for the John Martyn CD playing on the stereo..... et cetera et cetera."

I love doing this because it reminds me how blessed I am and how rich my life actually is. It's so easy to focus on the negative and on what I lack, but it takes real mindfullness to acknowledge what's good. Some years ago, my life was pretty miserable - or so I thought - and I spent all my time feeling sorry for myself. A wise friend, sick of listening to me moan, suggested I find a way to practice gratitude daily. I devised this little game. I began with 10 stones. It took forever for me to find 10 things I was grateful for. But I eventually managed it, so she told me to increase it to 20. I groaned and told her she was nuts. I eventually found 20 things to be grateful for, so she said why not 30? And so on. I think my bowl has well over 50 things in it now. It's literally overflowing, and so is my heart. Legs and Noodle, who are now wise to what this bowl is about, keep adding things to it - a fallen chestnut, a chipped chevron bead, an old Danish coin with a hole in the middle.


Whenever I'm having a crap day, or even an okay one, I take my bowl and practice this simple spiritual exercise. In 10 minutes or less, abundance has banished gloom. Gratitude walks again.


The large round stone at the bottom with the jaggedy lop-sided smile is my Skunk stone.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Two smiling stones! Amazing. Lovely entry. :)

Anonymous said...

What a great thing to do on those craptastic days we all have! Thanks for your email today ... I'm really enjoying getting to know you! :)

Anonymous said...

Love, love, love this entry, Megatonlove! Thank you for the inspiration.

Naturelady said...

I LOVE it! I think we'll gather our stones & shells and put together a family bowl -- we do already do a nightly ritual with our kids, reflecting with them about the best & worst parts of our day (idea is NOT to complain, but just to reflect & share) -- and most nights we find that even on a "bad" day, we can always find something "good" -- in fact, the "bad" turns out not necessarily be all that bad after all...

Anonymous said...

Megaton! what a beautiful blog! You CAN write beautifully, always have! And your wit is unbeatable. honest gid :) keep on writing!

Anonymous said...

Hoy Pare...for sure we need to remind ourselves how much we have, it's far too easy to remember in rosey hues what we had...time to move on...love laugh live...keep posting i'm lovin it!!!
inspirational diversion from life's mundane chores :)

Anonymous said...

hi megatonlove :) thank you for this life-enhancing post. i'm sharing this link on my facebook profile :)

Anonymous said...

found you and this blog thru a post in FB...this is so timely because i feel so utterly down in the dumps and tho i know i have many, many things to be thankful for, i can't seem to do what you do in your gratitude walks...when one is depressed (or is it only me?), nothing on earth can take out the gloom until the perceived problem is resolved. i'll keep on reading tho...i guess somehow it helps me to know that others are also in some kind of struggles and also trying to stay afloat as i am.

mrs matched socks and stuff said...

love this piece so much-definitely put a big smile on my face and the wonder of simple living back in my heart. thanks!!!

abbie at play said...

btw megaton, your pictures are beautiful. since i'm planning to buy a simple camera for amateur me, would you mind telling me what you use?

Megatonlove said...

Wow, thank you for such positive comments! Why not take my gratitude bowl idea and adapt it for your own use? I may write a follow-up post on this topic one day, but for now I'm just taking life one blog post at a time.

I use a Sony DSC-100 digital camera that's about 3 years old. It's reliable, takes good pictures and I'm happy with it. I shoot using natural light whenever possible because flash photography often makes the picture look flat and lifeless. I still don't know what 80% of the buttons or settings on my camera are for, and I probably never will! But I guess what I know is enough for what I need.

abbie at play said...

thanks for the photo info :) i hate flash-photos myself, so i really loved the natural light in yours. thanks and more power to you and your blog!

Megatonlove said...

For those of you who want to try this but don't find a bowl practical, I've also made my daily gratitude practice more portable too - in the form of a necklace that I made out of different beads strung together. It's useful to have when sitting in airports, traffic jams and the doctor's waiting room. Wearing it reminds me to BE grateful, so I don't have to wait to feel grateful.