As a young woman in my twenties and thirties, I
learned a great deal about thankfulness from Daphne
Rose Kingma. We spent a great deal of time
together, working on books, and again and again I
would watch her make a personal connection to the
people who came across her path--garbage collectors,
long-distance operators, or the person selling
coffee on the corner. No matter what was going
on in her own life, no matter how rushed or upset
she was, she took the time to connect. I'd
hear her on the phone with the airline reservations
desk. In the course of getting a flight she'd learn
the woman's name, where she lived, and the fact that
she, like Daphne, loved flashy high heels.
Daphne was so genuinely appreciative of the other
person's help that the person on the other end of
the phone felt washed in a warm bath of love.
It was then I realized that while gratitude was a
feeling, it could be cultivated. I set out to
emulate her (although I still am not as good at it
as she).
One of the most fascinating things about feelings is
that they come and go, like waves in the ocean of
our consciousness. Happiness, anger, fear,
love, thankfulness--they arise in response to some
external or internal trigger and then subside.
We feel angry and then we don't. We are
"in love" and then we aren't. We
feel thankful, and then it's over.
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It's
particularly easy to see the tide of feelings in a
child, where they come and go so quickly and
uncensoredly. One minute my daughter is
screaming her head off because I have left the room;
I return and pick her up--a big smile.
As we grow, one of our spiritual tasks is to move
beyond this purely emotional response to life and
begin to cultivate positive emotions as "habits
of the heart," as Daphne calls them. What
this means is that we learn to love even when we
don't "feel" loving, be kind when we'd
rather be surly, and feel grateful when we don't
particularly feel like being thankful. In this
way, we turn feelings, which come and go, into
conscious attitudes that we act upon even if we
don't "feel" like it.
Our attitudes are our mental stances, the positions
we hold vis-à-vis life. In some ways, our
attitudes determine everything, because they are the
glasses through which we see the world. Is the
world a wonderful place or a hellhole? All of
us know that the answer to that question depends on
our attitude on any given day. Has the world
changed? Most likely our thinking about it
has. When we consciously cultivate positive
attitudes, such as love, joy, and gratitude, we
begin to "remake" the world. We
literally live in a different place because our
attitudes about it have changed.
The particular beauty of an attitude of gratitude is
that it instantly connects us to everything
else. In an important way, it is a recognition
of the connection, the switch, between us and the
rest of life. And consciously recognizing it
opens the flow: the more grateful we are, the
more of an abundant sense of life we will
experience.
For that's the irony about the relationship between
attitudes and feelings. The more you cultivate
the attitude, even if you don't feel it, the more
you experience the feeling. The more loving we
are, the more love we feel. The more joy we
radiate, the more comes back our way. And the
more thankful we are, the more we experience the
richness of spirit that grateful feelings produce.
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Expressing
gratitude ignites the light within us and is a sure path
to joy.
Gratitude is one of the highest vibrations of energy we can
create,
it's free, and anyone can give it. It can be as simple as
being thankful
for soup, being thankful one can see, walk, wiggle
a finger, or
tap to
a beat. One can be grateful for happy children,
good
neighbors, good
luck, and simply being alive. . . . Part of the
journey toward joy
involves
not waiting around for trouble,
but being continuously aware of
our blessings.
Charlotte Davis
Kasl
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