"Thanksgiving enables us to be fully present in each of the moments of our lives and, at the same time, be fully present to the eternity which is crashing into those moments (for those who have eyes to see). We have the ability to resist the culture of despair by bearing witness to life and hope! Cynicism loosens its smugly fearful, icy grip, warmed by winds of thanks."
This will be my final day meditating on thankfulness. To be honest, I need to move on. When I started this project, it was just something that sounded like a good idea to me. It was a good idea. But thankfulness is no longer what I am focusing on. Perhaps I will choose another meditation next, like discipline or maybe joy. Perhaps I will take a break. This was a very enriching project partly because I had no idea where it was going to take me or what form the thankfulness was going to take. I figured that for this final post, I would go over some of the lessons that I learned. However, if you want to do that, you can simply go back and read the previous posts.
I will however, leave with a final note: thankfulness is vitally important and vitally under-appreciated in our society. Again, I was going to explicate this further, but this has been what this whole project has been about, and I need not tread where I have already journeyed. I will say that the reason that I am moving on is because I am not currently passionate about an attitude of thankfulness, or at least writing about it and thus I am currently unwilling to give it the effortfull thought that it requires. But I am excited for two things: that I stuck to this project and to see what my next project will be.
I do hope that you learned something from this; actually, scratch that, I hope that you grew and became a better person through my subtle, gentle meditations. If not, it was still a healthy project for me to do. Thank you for reading if you have.
This has been the 9th and final day meditating on thankfulness.
Friday, January 16, 2015
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Meditations on Thankfulness: Day 8
"Thanksgiving enables us to be fully present in each of the moments of our lives and, at the same time, be fully present to the eternity which is crashing into those moments (for those who have eyes to see). We have the ability to resist the culture of despair by bearing witness to life and hope! Cynicism loosens its smugly fearful, icy grip, warmed by winds of thanks."
For posterity's sake, I figured that I would spend this time giving some practical examples from my recent life. The first comes from a couple of weeks ago when I was nodding off to sleep. The guy who currently sleeps next to me has had a vicious cough for the last several weeks and on this particular night, he was coughing particularly hard. Instead of being agitated at the distraction, I chose to be thankful and let my mind play within the realm of thankfulness. It got to the point that I became so thankful that I have good health, that my body has a great immune system, and that I have access, if I were to need it, to pristine medical facilities. All of this thankfulness, which gave way to joy, was created simply from the harsh cough of my roommate.
Another time, I was on my way to work, utterly thankful that I have a job. Every time that I see people who are looking for a job or are utterly without one, I am thankful again that I have a job and one that does a fairly adequate job of providing for me. Just simply allowing myself to go down this path resulted in not only a joy but also a desire to share the profits therefrom with those who do not possess a job.
I guess the point of this post is merely to illuminate that these things that I have been discussing are not just nice ideals, but can in fact invigorate you.
This has been the eighth day meditating on thankfulness.
For posterity's sake, I figured that I would spend this time giving some practical examples from my recent life. The first comes from a couple of weeks ago when I was nodding off to sleep. The guy who currently sleeps next to me has had a vicious cough for the last several weeks and on this particular night, he was coughing particularly hard. Instead of being agitated at the distraction, I chose to be thankful and let my mind play within the realm of thankfulness. It got to the point that I became so thankful that I have good health, that my body has a great immune system, and that I have access, if I were to need it, to pristine medical facilities. All of this thankfulness, which gave way to joy, was created simply from the harsh cough of my roommate.
Another time, I was on my way to work, utterly thankful that I have a job. Every time that I see people who are looking for a job or are utterly without one, I am thankful again that I have a job and one that does a fairly adequate job of providing for me. Just simply allowing myself to go down this path resulted in not only a joy but also a desire to share the profits therefrom with those who do not possess a job.
I guess the point of this post is merely to illuminate that these things that I have been discussing are not just nice ideals, but can in fact invigorate you.
This has been the eighth day meditating on thankfulness.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Meditations on Thankfulness: Day 7
"Thanksgiving enables us to be fully present in each of the moments of our lives and, at the same time, be fully present to the eternity which is crashing into those moments (for those who have eyes to see). We have the ability to resist the culture of despair by bearing witness to life and hope! Cynicism loosens its smugly fearful, icy grip, warmed by winds of thanks."
Throughout this venture, I have kept talking about all of the benefits of thankfulness. However, might there be negatives? The only one that is on my mind right now, and the purpose of this post, is the idea of complacency. I think that thankfulness as an attitude should motivate you to act, however I have also frequently discussed the idea of being firmly content with what you have, even for small things. I think when that fails is when that contentment grows into complacency and leads you to not try to improve things when they are not as great as they could be. Do not get me wrong: complacency and contentment are not the same thing. But, if thankfulness leads to complacency then it can be said that it has a negative consequence.
However, I do not think that this is a natural outcome of thankfulness. The contrary is a reality wherein you are so thankful for something that you desire to make it great, make it better. It is in this that the secret to defeating complacency, which some may say is a natural by-product of thankfulness, lies. Thankfulness can lead to a burning desire to be great, just as much as it can lead to complacency.
This all begs the question: where does the line form? Where is the line between contentment and complacency, between a lazy, eyes-closed satisfaction and a burning desire to be great that has resulted from thankfulness? Right now, I do not have the answer to this question. I believe that it is a case-by-case scenario and that perhaps I will find the answer in further meditation, but perhaps the line is an invisible one. I just encourage everyone to be thankful, and be a man/woman of action and of greatness because of your thankfulness, not of lazy complacency.
This has been the seventh day meditating of thankfulness.
Throughout this venture, I have kept talking about all of the benefits of thankfulness. However, might there be negatives? The only one that is on my mind right now, and the purpose of this post, is the idea of complacency. I think that thankfulness as an attitude should motivate you to act, however I have also frequently discussed the idea of being firmly content with what you have, even for small things. I think when that fails is when that contentment grows into complacency and leads you to not try to improve things when they are not as great as they could be. Do not get me wrong: complacency and contentment are not the same thing. But, if thankfulness leads to complacency then it can be said that it has a negative consequence.
However, I do not think that this is a natural outcome of thankfulness. The contrary is a reality wherein you are so thankful for something that you desire to make it great, make it better. It is in this that the secret to defeating complacency, which some may say is a natural by-product of thankfulness, lies. Thankfulness can lead to a burning desire to be great, just as much as it can lead to complacency.
This all begs the question: where does the line form? Where is the line between contentment and complacency, between a lazy, eyes-closed satisfaction and a burning desire to be great that has resulted from thankfulness? Right now, I do not have the answer to this question. I believe that it is a case-by-case scenario and that perhaps I will find the answer in further meditation, but perhaps the line is an invisible one. I just encourage everyone to be thankful, and be a man/woman of action and of greatness because of your thankfulness, not of lazy complacency.
This has been the seventh day meditating of thankfulness.
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