Living to Learn and Learning to Love
My dear darling baby birds, aka my precious. A few years ago during the Trek 100 childhood cancer benefit ride. Lake Mills, WI
Across all of this here bird brain’s life, I have liked Thanksgiving Day because of and including, but not limited to:
Time off from school, work, and all the other rats-a-racing shit we do
Jovial family togetherness
The almost forced reminder, figuratively and literally, to consider and potentially practice mindful empathy and recognition throughout our personal worlds of human interaction
The turkey and its organizational flow, the children, and the pies…oh the glorious pies
This bird always liked Thanksgiving but resonating soundly during these here relatively recent life times…the last eight or nine years…I lived to learn and learned to love Thanksgiving.
My bird brain upgraded the Thanksgiving seat on the plane to my heart from the rearward position like, to the betterment of class forward seat love, because of…reasonably, a slight game of grammatical semantics.
Soundly within the last six years, when my head is raised enough from the tasks and pursuits of life to see it and hear it, a consistent notion circles around the cave’s entrance of my ears, and sometimes, I let the suggestion fly into my head.
“Practice gratitude…”, they say.
More specifically they suggest, “Write down notes of gratitude every day, this will help ground you…”, whoever they quite possibly maybe-bee-bee.
Gratitude. I grabbed the gratitude suit off the rack, pulled it off the hanger, and tried it on. As I first put one arm into the proverbial jacket of gratitude and reached back for the other armhole, it felt snug. I wriggled into the top half of the gratitude suit and shrugged my shoulders in the try-on mirror, the coat felt…yup, still snug. I let my shoulders drop…I tried not to judge and sabotage thy suit’s size…I took a deep cleansing breath. One more power-shopper Litmus test existed, the deal-breaker maneuver of bringing both arms up and out to my side, slowly but intently and without forced fullness moving my arms in front of me to see if the place between my scapula experienced the imagined feeling of this suit might rip. Yup, might rip…doesn’t fit…gratitude suit doesn’t fit me. The concept caught my eye and entered my ear but I felt no comfort within the cloak. Gratitude.
My daily process for effective living, for me, by my measure, begins with four tools:
Review and modify the sheet “This One Thing At A Time”, aka my to-do list which includes A-B-C prioritization columns and a task duration time estimate for each
Enter and begin to execute on the sheet “Daily Checklist”, aka “Top Three” which is a pre-formatted page of my eight critically-important daily objective components. “Objective” means I can definitively measure, touch, or acknowledge the thing
Enter the day’s planned agenda, drawn from the previous two sheets, into the sheet “Today, I will Do This…”, which includes a pre-planned timeslot alongside the planned to-do item
As I move throughout my day, I enter the outcome of actual activities into the sheet “Daily LIFE”, aka a week-long log sheet
I try to use these sheets daily, year-round and execute as such most of the time except when I’m shacked up in my technology-free cabin like I was for the last 20 of 21 days, doing not much nothing else aside from writing into a book of bird chirpings.
Within the second daily checklist / top three sheet as mentioned above, and positioned as the third item on the eight-item sheet is my section named “Thankful For 3 <”, aka the three or fewer things I feel thankful for today.
I previously tried on the gratitude suit when I heard and comprehended the concept. The older version of my top three sheet once showed item three as “Gratitude 3 <”. To echo…echo-echo…gratitude does not fit over these here shoulders.
I now love Thanksgiving Day because of the alignment, acknowledgment of, and congruency to much of what I am most often thankful for.
After putting the non-fitting gratitude suit back on the hanger, buttoning it up, and neatly placing it back on the rack, I walked off to continue my shopping and finally found the perfect suit for me, the thankful suit.
And this may be a mindless expedition into preciseness of focus, aka grammatical semantics, but to me, and for me, it matters.
I need to try and act with exacting intention, action, speech, and writings, it matters.
I need to try and stay organized, it matters.
I need to try and examine precisely what I do and do not, it matters.
I need to try and understand who I am and not, what I need and need not, want and want not.
I need to try and do these things, and do not as described, so as to stay alive.
I do not possess the foundational stability of safety, love, and self-confidence.
I worked hard and I work hard still to develop and retain these revered humanoid foundations.
I need some order in my life…some structure, some process, and some starter plans.
Not always do I operate within staunch order. To attempt such non-negotiable rigidity would be an untruth, I know better, shit changes every day. But I try to start with a plan and adjust as I journey.
I try to practice fun fluidity.
It matters…I try to do what I know is important to me…engaged with a project or initiative originating from my heart…mindful rest time not mindless slacking…pointed towards the sunshine even when the clouds follow me overhead everywhere I go…acting upon my lived learnings to keep me away from my monsters, apart from my unhealthy addictions and regulating my dirty-ego.
Precisely I wear the suit of thanks. To me and for me, thanks is truthful diction and resonates within, rings true outside myself too, and keeps me in order to live truthfully as I intend.
My top three or less list of thankful’s are accounts of spotlight reminders for the day, the appreciation of me here now, as I am, aka a list of what exists in these here hands. Acceptance of what I am and am not, where I am and am not, who I am and am not, what I rest with and what I omit. Generally speaking, the acceptance of everything making up the pieces of me, the outcomes of me, what I have and have not, what I have done and done not.
Critical to me are my nots. My nots are sometimes intentional, sometimes desired, sometimes painful, sometimes learning-abundant, and of course sometimes not. For the category of the undesirable not, this wrestling match partner is critical to my education, growth and success. These challenging adversaries are my best teachers, hands down. For example, people I do not jive with, tasks beyond my pleasure or ease of execution, all the many-many things I do not know, and the things out there with devilish intent to harm me. These elements teach me thrice what I learn otherwise when I blast through life with ease and pleasing tranquility. I honor my challenges, dropping my chin with humility and honor. Conversely, some nots are also desirable, like not eating a half-gallon of ice cream for lunch so I do not lay in bed all afternoon with a sore belly. Another desirable not is choosing to not have internet at my getaway cabin, so to focus and introspect efficiently without the online noise.
The suit of daily gratitude fits me not. Not at all to say I do not feel gratitude or communicate as such, but for my daily stay-alive tools, precise diction matters. To me and for me, gratitude is appreciativeness for a benefit granted or given to me from an outside force…something done for me or to me…honoring others…embellishment…indulging another…a feeling I point at over there…only as a result of outside entities or occurrences.
To me, both the words thankful and gratitude ring true as acknowledging something beautiful, angelic-like, treasured, spectacular, and stunning. Also, these two words are implied joyful appreciation, and resoundingly so.
I believe.
I believe only in the arms of others do we truly live, and truthfully do I proclaim as such.
I believe thankful works best for me, within my daily top three list.
I believe the weight of me is perched on my shoulders alone and within only my hands.
I know I would not be alive today if not for the outstretched hands of others, certifiably ten times over.
Yet still, I understand as the case may be, a shell game of words.
Thankful fits, all that encapsulates me and yes, sometimes granted me, but most often not.
Thankful…what I rest with, my kids, these shoes, this roof, this clean water, these quarters for rice and beans, my health because of what I do and do not, a functional brain, able fingers and mouth to think and learn out loud, and of course, the pie. Thankful.
