Adopting a New State of Being

gratitude: the state of being grateful; warm and friendly feeling toward a benefactor; kindness awakened by a favor received; thankfulness.

Gratitude, I think, is a natural response, a genuine feeling that springs up without effort in the wake of a gesture of kindness. Thankfulness - or Thanksgiving, if you will - is more intentional. It's a deliberate pause to express the gratitude you feel. For most of us, that's by the words "thank you" - the Pavlovian utterance dictated by the good manners instilled in us by our parents. Someone gives you something, and a little voice in your head prompts, "What do you say?'

Gratitude comes quickly and easily when a gift, a compliment or a favor are exchanged. It's omnipresent alongside selflessness. And miracles. And good times.

But what about the difficult times? The times in life that not only fail to provoke gratitude, they ignite the counter emotions of resentment, anger and frustration. In these times, the absence of gratitude make it nearly impossible to be thankful. Without the automatic response, the active response is forgotten. Without the inspiration of warm, benevolent feelings, how can one conjure up the energy to express them? And what would they be for?

The past year has been one of the most difficult of my life. Full of mental turmoil. Loneliness. Fear. Sorrow. I have fought my own demons. I have battled my own grief - all-consuming, heartbreaking grief - and I have borne the grief of others. I have lost love; I have lost loved ones. As calendar turned to November, I confess, I felt that Thanksgiving was going to be quite the ironic exercise. Thanks, but no thanks.

But the truth is - in spite of all I've lost and all I've endured - I have so many more blessings than I could ever imagine. For all of the things that are absent, there are so many more that are present in abundance.

Each day this week, I will be offering reflections on those blessings. I hope that by listening to that little voice and prompting myself to say "thank you," I'll inspire an ongoing state of gratitude, an acknowledgment of the reasons I have to be thankful.