In the past few years, I have noticed, that people use November as a month of gratitude, and the lists are of typical nice things, good things, easy gratitudes, if you will, to notice, but rare is it something bad with a silver lining.
It leads me to wonder if this gratitude month exercise would be more beneficial to find something good you learned from something bad.
Being grateful for kindness seems just too easy...like it isn't a challenge, that it doesn't require you to sweat or change or require courage.
Being grateful for unkindness and how it changed you, seems to make you go deeper into life...forcing you to see yourself and the world with new eyes.
The exercise of recognizing the good as good seems so easy, it appears pointless.
Now, how would it be to pull apart your day and take out the tough spots and work with them until you can see their gifts? This, I believe would be a much more meaningful lesson in gratitude; to be grateful for everything...not just in the beautiful and loving.
For it is in the darkness that we truly can see why it arrived, what its message is, and what it is here to tell us about ourselves. In my experiences, the darkness always brought back to me a part of myself that was absent in my life.
To me, this kind of gratitude would change the world.
I am grateful for the courage I have to speak my mind, my feelings, especially when it would be easier to be silent.
I am grateful for the strength to walk differently; when it would be easier to join the masses.
I am grateful for being able to stand out and be one with my truths...when I would be more accepted if I did not.
I would like to start a new trend, and have it be everyday; to be grateful for the hardest parts of our lives...for it would change the inner core of everyone who did this exercise.
I recognize, that many folks move along their days, not even recognizing the good, but more often than not, it is in the dark times, we truly get lost. That perhaps if we all knew, it was then the greatest gifts were given, we would stop and search until we became grateful for each moment of darkness...which always comes bringing gifts.
The darkness is the greatest teacher and if used correctly, can return aspects of yourself that you have given away...or have been stolen with force or power or brainwashing.
My toughest times have brought me back to me.
I am grateful I have been willing to go where most flee from; to sit in the deepest darkest part of me and see its brightness...to see that imperfect is I am Perfect, coming from whence I came.
When you can see the perfection in the darkness....that gratitude is beyond what the mind can hold. It is felt in each cell and changes who you are.
