It's easier to see what's wrong (it's actually automatic given we're hell-bent driven by survival) and to express outrage, than it is to express gratitude. Make no error: there's a lot about which it's appropriate to express outrage. Yet it's a terrible cost which comes with only seeing what's wrong, while staying blind to the possibility of being grateful. And if you say being grateful isn't possible given the preponderance of what's wrong, then try practicing being grateful as an exercise ie as a discipline. It calls for something big from us to generate gratitude as a possibility. It's impact is huge. By that I'm referring to the space it creates. In this conversation, let's consider what it is to express gratitude and the space it creates, and not the usual expressing gratitude for specific people and situations. There's enormous transformative power in living life coming from "I'm grateful.". "Grateful? For what? Didn't you see the news?". No, that ain't it. It's "I'm grateful - period.". "I'm grateful" is a space from which to come. If you take on the discipline of being grateful like a space, like a context ie like a possibility, your first try may be to start an inventory - like "OK, what is there which I can be grateful for?". That, if you tell the truth about it, reveals our ground of being for gratitude (or at least it reveals a ground of being for gratitude) as: without being grateful for something, it's at best a non sequitur to consider living coming from gratitude; at worst it says we're grounded in not being grateful till something worthy of being grateful for, shows up. Typically to escape this conundrum, we'll then try expressing something like "I'm grateful for Life and for being alive!". Yes, that's all-inclusive. But it's still a being grateful for - albeit a big one. It's not simply being grateful period - like a space, like a context, like a possibility from which to come. |
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