Gratitude is an antidote for discontentment
Gratitude is a powerful antidote for discontentment. While this is so commonly stated that, as I type these words, I feel like I’m writing text for an inspirational fridge magnet, this is a fact. It is a fact that I’ve learned from dozens and dozens of students. It is a fact that I’ve learned from dozens of teachers –teachers of psychology, religion, spirituality, yoga, and even business. It is a tried-and-true fact that I’ve tested in my own life.
Keeping a gratitude journal or list
A “practice of gratitude” is often taught as something we’re to do daily. It’s pretty simple: sit down with a pad and pen (this also works with the note app on your smart phone or tablet) and jot down five things about your day or your life for which you are grateful.
Most people suggest doing it at the end of the day, when you can reflect on all that you did and all that happened to you during the day. Many of my students find that they are too tired at the end of the day to meaningfully engage in one more “to do” on their “To Do List.” My advice to them? Find a time that works for you and do it then. You can absolutely wake up – before your new day begins – and pause to look back – with an eye tuned to gratitude – over the day you lived yesterday.
The power in this practice is two-fold. Seeing that there are five whole things you are grateful for on an otherwise challenging day has an astonishingly healing effect. But the practice also has a cumulative effect. On a really tough day, when you cannot think of one single thing to jot down, flipping through your lists from days and weeks ago can be a reminder that, even though today stunk to high heaven, you have had and will have again better days.
A different take on a gratitude practice
But today, I’d like to share a different take on gratitude – one that struck me as I read (and re-read many times over the course of a few days because I sensed there was something in there for me that I wasn’t quite grasping) a brand-new-to-me poem by Mary Oliver called Can You Imagine? In it she describes being perplexed by the stillness of trees.
… – surely you can’t imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years, slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can’t imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.
What if, I thought, instead of making a gratitude list as an antidote to discontentment (be it a bad mood, or a sad mood, or the aftermath of a disappointment or even a tragedy) I sat (or stood) as still as a tree and soaked in everything about this one moment – good or bad, happy or sad? Couldn’t I, like Oliver’s trees, not discover that I am loving every minute of this life of mine? If I could hold still enough – just for a moment?
A gratitude moment
So I tried it.
I sat still in the same chair I was in as I re-read the poem. I felt my ergonomically correct desk chair supporting both my bottom and my back – and I was grateful. I felt the sun on my left cheek, pouring in the window, filtered by my orchids and the bonsai tree that my brother gave my mother and that wound up in my house when she could no longer care for it – and I was grateful and warmed from the inside out. I closed my eyes and listened and heard the soft ringing of the windchime in my backyard that was a gift from the publisher who released my book out into the world – and I was grateful, warm and hopeful. I drew myself back within my office and then within my body and I felt my stomach rumble from my bowl of granola, I felt my chest rise and fall with each breath, I felt my heart beating in my chest – and I was grateful, warm, hopeful and ALIVE.
Gratitude as a joyful jolt of aliveness any old time
I was literally thrumming with aliveness.
And I thought – what if, instead of doing this gratitude-in-a-moment practice as an antidote to discontentment (which totally works, by the way!), I simply took a moment or two (or five, or ten) each day to feel alive? To feel the sheer awesomeness of this opportunity to live this little life of mine? To feel the great joy of exploring this little corner of this gorgeous planet? To feel the immense connection between this one little life of mine and all the little lives – 2-legged, 4-legged, and no-legged (like my orchids or my bonsai), and even 6- and 8-legged (yes, even them because I’m feeling so flippin’ ALIVE!) – that I’m bumping into each day?
Why not try it? I suspect that you, like me, will end up loving every minute of it all, just as Mary Oliver imagined the trees feel as they stand steady and still.
Yoga Sutra 1.1 Atha yoga anushasanam
In the NOW, yoga happens, says Patanjali. And it follows that, in the NOW, life happens. In the NOW is when we can best feel the thrill and the honor and the joy and the pain and the love and the heartbreak and the curiosity and the awesomeness of being alive.