WORDS WRITTEN AT THE POINT OF GRATITUDE - Reflections on 2025

• I am grateful to still be alive. Last years HA! made a slow, but perceptible, shift in my views on life and what its for. As 2025 has progressed, I've felt encouraged to make the most of life, certainly, but that doesn't mean becoming excessively busy, I've found a particular peace in allowing the quality of what I do, and how I choose to execute it, motivate me, rather than a list of achievements, and tasks completed. Yes, I still have my creative projects, but they are not quite the central most important thing I do, they are just one thing I enjoy doing. I've come to realise that we all leave unfinished projects behind when we die, that's how it is. So, no need to hurry.
  
  
• I could have survived the HA! but with my mind and body impaired in some way, making life difficult not just for me. but also for my husband. I feel gratitude every day that I can go out for a walk, breath the air, feel more deeply connected to nature and the world. I still have my awareness, a fully functioning consciousness, that can find pleasure and enjoyment in even the most simple of sensations. That I still have my independence, my ability to reflect on my experience, it's a tremendous gift. For if you're unable to express your appreciation of your life, where can the gratefulness, where can the love come from? 
  
  
• To love and to be loved in return is a precious commodity to be savoured. And I've realised with greater cogency this year that the ability to love, lies at the core of feeling grateful. I lived a good deal of my early adulthood, craving to be loved and not finding it. And this had an ungrateful corroding effect upon my world view, there was an underlying bitterness, a consequent souring in any potential for gratitude. This changed in mid life when I first met my husband. Our life living together now, can feel such an easy going one, it can also be easy to forget that this has taken effort to get to, and still takes effort for love to be expressed and not to take anything for granted. I love my husband more now than I ever have. Such a clever, creative, loving, caring and considerate man, that I'm so grateful to have this one opportunity to share a life with him.
  
  
• I was sipping a breakfast cup of rose tea, a favourite morning drink. For just one fleeting moment I had this rush of pleasure, of feeling so grateful for this drink I was imbibing. The warmth, the aroma, its flavour, the sensation of comfort and reassurance. So often I am eating and drinking on automatic, I'm feeding my hunger, but not really fully present to the sensations and pleasures of it.  Much of what can feel vital in being alive, comes down to these small fine details of life. What I am unaware of, I cannot appreciate, what I fail to appreciate I cannot feel grateful for, and hence cannot value or love.

• In the West we take so much for granted. Recent years have shown just how subject to abrupt change, how vulnerable to the unexpected we all are. And it is in moments like these, when we can see more clearly the things that we treasure, to feel gratitude for what we already have. This is still a favourable time we are currently living within, and I'm grateful for that. If you are gay in this country you have been given more rights now than we've ever had previously, We are all broadly still able to live our life however we wish, without state oppression or harassment or violence.
  
  This zeitgeist is of course subject to change, their are premonitions of that already emerging, the potential for a reversal of our current tolerant progressive approach. Whatever has been given can be taken away. Tolerance, unfortunately, is conditional. Express your gratitude for what you already have, and one way of expressing the depth of that gratitude, our love for it, is by being prepared to defend it. Gratitude is an appreciative proactive love. 
  
  

ARTICLE - Awareness & Applying an Appreciative Eye

 After two months of writing in a Gratitude Journal I have decided to stop. I learnt through doing this about the nature and process by which you may arrive at gratitude. As a practice I think it has made me aware of the need to express one's gratitude more vocally in person, when it is an appreciation of someone, or what they have done for you. Just writing down that I'm grateful, has felt on such occasions simply insufficient as a response. This article is by way of a conclusion, with how I am now viewing gratefulness.

Gratefulness, is not a perception, its an outcome, its a feeling that arises within you. This arrives because we have looked, and we have seen, truly seen something. Having become aware of it, you more fully appreciate its value, for what it has given you. Depending on the depth of our appreciation, we may feel an up-welling of gratitude. For how something or someone is embellishing and enriching your life. This is the fullest purest form of what gratefulness can be.

It is not about you picking up a cup of tea and saying to yourself 'I will feel grateful for this'  At times the journal did feel clunky like that. It can seem a confection, the contrivance of an outcome. My writing in my Gratitude Journal was always likely to be tainted with artifice of some kind. Behaving as if merely by the act of writing something down gratefulness would develop, it is a bit of a conceit. In its most natural form gratefulness rarely arrives that way. This doesn't necessarily undermine the purpose of my writing about it.  Intended as it was, as an action that would stimulate thought and awareness. But it has also highlighted the limitations of keeping a journal, as a practice. 

By writing about it, I was forced into analysing it, and that easily became like performing a scientific dissection. That may also act as an attunement, a tuning in to gratefulness. But that doesn't in my experience make you more grateful necessarily. If it could encourage you to identify then express your gratefulness, publicly and vocally, this would only ever be a good thing.

I've come to a conclusion, which once I reached it made perfect sense. so much so I wondered why I hadn't seen it sooner. But once I did, I realised I didn't necessarily need to continue the Gratitude Journal.* Everything starts with looking, becoming more aware. It is probably more effective to cultivate a deeper awareness of things, of others, of reality, first and foremost. Out of which gratefulness may or may not emerge. Looking back this is what the Gratitude Journal has largely been, an exercise in developing awareness and applying an appreciative eye.

Like any other experience gratefulness is a multi-facted conditioned event. It depends on the quality of your perceptions primarily, followed by the degree of ones own sensitivity and ability to express one's feelings and responses. It is in many ways very similar to happiness, you cannot consciously make yourself happy. Likewise, you cannot make yourself grateful by force of will, you can only create the conditions for it.

Things arise and cease all the time. What arises and what ceases changes the nature of our conscious experience. The quality of our awareness, of our appreciative eye, of what we see and the way that we see it, within the surrounding conditions in which our lives are taking place, forms whatever will follow. One consequence would be gratitude.

Its like seed planting. We can have the seed of an idea, to be more grateful, say. And we plant it in the ground of our conscious awareness. Depending upon how we tend to it thereafter, it may or may not grow into a fully fledged plant that forms blossom. Planting it in soil does not in itself guarantee it will germinate. We mostly have to travel hopefully, keep watering and tending to it, but surrendering the outcome to whatever. This means we should never stop encouraging ourselves to be more grateful as we proceed through our lives. Every now and then it will arise and take you completely by surprise, but Hey! - you will be more than ready.

*I have since converted my Gratitude Journal, at least for the foreseeable future, into an Awareness Journal, written of course with an appreciative eye.

WORDS WRITTEN AT THE POINT OF GRATITUDE - NO 4

A selection of extracts from recent entries in my Gratitude Journal.

• "I continue to marvel that I still have all my faculties post the HA!. I remain in relative good health both physically and mentally. My Mother's mind was as bright as a pin right up to her death, even as various physical ailments gradually rounded on her. Whilst my memory fails me from time to time, I do well. I am able to write a lot and to be creative in so many ways. I can plan my life and carry out that plan. All of which are a huge boon and to be thankful for. Yes, there are the ever increasing aches and pains, but they come and go dependent upon usage and weather. I can still be grateful that a lot of my ailments are not permanent losses, as yet."
  
  
• "One can only be grateful for what brings you joy, love and a sense of meaning. And you start to find and encounter these things everywhere."
  
  
• "To be grateful is to feel a simultaneous impulse to be generous. It is I suspect founded upon a sense of an unburdened love. You feel the flow of love for so many things that it cannot but be expressed in gratitude. Love and joy are like two sides of the same coin, with a similar volition to be generous with one's time, thoughts, feelings and actions."
  
  
• "I've been wondering about ingratitude. In my experience it is more often a studied resistance to either expressing gratitude or feeling one is expected to be grateful or coerced to be so. It exists in a reactive relationship with its opposite. It tries, and more often fails, to present itself as rational and reasonable whilst essentially not being either.....Ingratitude is like a form of metaphysical sulk."
  
  
• " This morning I'm feeling a bit bereft of gratitude. Its like looking for recognisible faces in a crowd, but not finding any."

WORDS WRITTEN AT THE POINT OF GRATITUDE - No 3

Another edited selection from my gratitude journal from recent weeks.

• I'm grateful to a sense for time and the clock marking its passing, a constant reminder of how fortunate I am. That time, however fleeting, always offers you an opportunity to do things better or differently until the very last second or minute of your life concludes.
  
  
• Meditation can be challenging at the best of times, and it was today. When I'm tired or sleepy the practice becomes to embrace the tiredness, the unwilling heart that wants to settle or snuggle into itself. In those moments when focus and intention returns, however briefly, there is a sigh of recognition, as if to say - Ah! I remember you, I remember this. And you feel a short wave of gratitude, a bit like a reward for coming back to a different sense of oneself and your relationship with the world.
  
  
• Strangely grateful for being a bit of a grump this morning, it's a good teacher when read as an indicator that something needs addressing. I believe in finding a way to be grateful for feeling bad tempered and moody. You can't just be grateful for 'the nice cuddly stuff', which would be too one sided.
  
  
• Grateful for every thought, feeling, idea and experience, all are some form of gift. That these things may not be what they first appear to be. You can feel grateful for anything, you just have to find the right angle to approach it with. This can take some working out.
  
  
• There are insights to be had even from the most unpromising or resistant material. And, yeah, that can be something to be grateful for.
  
  
• To be fully awake to the world would in itself be a state of gratitude.

WORDS WRITTEN AT THE POINT OF GRATITUDE - No 2

This one is a longish edited entry from a recent gratitude journal. This came out in one extemporaneous flow.

" You know I would say today I'm feeling gratitude for my life and experiences. Looking back at the whole cornucopia of it. Its full of my interests, doubts, successes and mistakes, the opportunities taken and missed. It's all a bit of an exotic melange. One I would not have missed for the world. I'm grateful for it all.

Any human life, according to Buddhism, is 'a precious opportunity'** And this morning I'm feeling the fragile delicate nature of that opportunity. The only coda I could put at the end of that would be gratitude - for everyone I've ever met and had contact with - have loved and fallen in love with - have worked or crossed swords with - have exchanged ideas with - have worked creatively with - have appreciated, idolised and been a huge fan of - if only for five minutes - the toys both childhood and adult I've enjoyed playing with - the hearts I've broken - the hearts I've lifted - the one's I've let down and the one's I've made proud - the one's I've admired closely or from afar - the rush of my enthusiasms - the chasing of wild dreams - the despair of the last bus home after a hopeless evening - the tender ending of an affair - all the learning and the seeking for knowledge - and through it all a sense for the history of it all - of past lives lived - the complex inheritance of our humanity - these can only instill a sense of gratitude.

This morning I am sensitive and emotional, to the enormity of what I've written this floods me with feelings of love for it all, and not wanting to let go of one moment of it. To hold life to my chest tightly like a bunch of bright fragrant flowers. Simultaneously knowing that flowers fade and my memories die with me. And though I do not fully understand why, that forgetting, that fading away is a good thing. Nothing is permanent in this life, it is changeable and fickle, yet that is what makes it also unpredictable and offers up surprises, happiness and joy, in unequal measures. That it's something to feel grateful for, that nothing lingers for long, whether good or bad. Whatever I do, I should never become indifferent to it. Never stop trying to be better at riding the roller coaster."


** Human life is 'a precious opportunity' because through it you can wake up, be enlightened to what the 13th century Zen monk Dogen called 'the dream within a dream'.

WORDS WRITTEN AT THE POINT OF GRATITUDE - No 1

I've recently begun writing a gratitude journal. I'll post from time to time edited selections. Here's a few from recent weeks.

• I have to be aware of not turning gratefulness into a task list, that I must find a dozen things to be grateful for in one day, or I am failing. I am trying to be more open, as I write, to the gratitude journal being whatever it turns out to be on any one day. Imbued with an aura of gratefulness, where it moves in and out of states, of being more or less explicit. Gratefulness can be a demeanour, where gratitude is one quality implicit within it.

• Writing here forces you to be more aware of what is going on around you. At the moment I oscillate between looking for things to be grateful for and examining the process of gratefulness emerging. Awareness seems primary, which appreciation follows, and though it is part of what gratefulness is, it is not gratefulness, but a close cousin. Appreciation is more like an observation, done from a distance, not fully emotionally engaged with what it is seeing. Gratefulness appreciates and goes out to the thing observed to express gratitude, in a sense directly to it.

• Gratitude, at its purest, is given freely to the object or person. If the latter, it also has to be received. Any form of gratefulness is welcome, but it seems that there are differing degrees of it, depending upon how publicly it is being expressed. In this sense any gratefulness is an incomplete thing the more abstract it is. It is always a work in practice, one that is never finished like a task list. 
  
  
• To be fully grateful you have to be content. The rolling stones of discontent tending to drown out our more appreciative thoughts. Our society is at present going through a huge roistering amount of discontent with itself. So its hard to resist getting caught up in its whirlpools.

MY OWN WALKING - Journal - 11/02/2022

Whilst the Husband was away on a weeks solitary retreat, I stayed as much as possible at home. My general aims;~ to not do shop related work, increase the amount of silence in my day, to not be busy, nor settle into a routine. But you know the form, what you do on the first day goes so well you cut and paste the same programme in for the rest of the week. The desire to be more spontaneous and receptive to the ritual momentum present right now, before you know it, turns into a regular spot every day at 9am for Ayurvedic breathing exercises. Staying at home alone has its own challenges. That its nothing like being on solitary, is but one. You are still living in the realm of the familiar. The habitual ways you occupy space and utilise time.

I don't know about you, but I like the idea of open unstructured days more than the actuality, where I become fidgety. Initially I'm uptight, too concerned about making the best use of my free time. Though it is meant to be just that - free time - no plan - no agenda, not my usual mix of driven task lists and deadlines. There is also the impulse to run away from too much silence, to fill the sound void with anything. Once alone I talk aloud to myself with less compunction. Though I have times when I absolutely love silence, I also can get fearful of them. What might unfurl should I fully surrender myself? So I fidget uncomfortably, reluctant to commit to any activity that comes to mind. Internally panicking at this indecisive drift and my inactivity. Time is literally slipping away. This silence will be the death of me.

And yet things do come up. Many years ago in Cambridge, I regularly went to see Richard - The Osteopath. A very fine practitioner, who was also adept at reading through your body the nature of the consciousness inhabiting it. One time, after a treatment had finished and I was putting my coat on to leave, he made an observation that was right on the button. 'I get the feeling that you are like a shop full of very beautiful objects, lovingly displayed, everything just so. But if one tiny thing disappoints, becomes lost, broken or out of place then your whole life, the shop, everything - in your mind tumbles into ruins'  The discomforting truth of this statement reappeared again this week.

I've been reflecting on gratefulness, in the wake of watching talks and reading books by Brother David Steindl-Rast, who has written rather a lot on this subject. Its made me realise quite how ungrateful I have been at times, particularly with how my life has turned out. That it wasn't how I originally imagined it would be, was a flaw in my perception, not of myself or the world. When I reflect on my life now, I have been fortunate, with much to feel grateful for. However, some grudges, resentments, disappointments still linger on well past their Use Before date. Am I going to go to my grave still holding onto these? Will I move on? By the end of my days will it be grudges or gratefulness?

Brother David refers a lot to living in the 'given' world, being present to it, aware and responsive. Seeing each day is a gift, a surprise and an opportunity. That you can only truly feel grateful for a 'gift' when you recognise and acknowledge that it is 'a gift' and you value or find meaning in the thing you've been given. My practice at the moment is with the latter - valuing what I've been given. I so easily devalue things, myself included, what I do, what has happened, what other people do for me. As a consequence I fail to express my gratitude enough. Mostly because in the moment what there is to be grateful for is being obscured by ungratefulness, dislike, even aversion. Perhaps one thing is not quite right in the carefully curated little shop of very precious objects, that is my life. Obsessing over what isn't quite right means I tend to overlook all the rest that is.

There is an American saying 'When life serves you lemons, make lemonade'. A lot that happens to us feels, and maybe is, awful at the time. Life can be difficult to handle emotionally. But often these sorts of situations have, in the past, prompted me to take active steps to move on from them. To forge a new direction from which to grow. Whatever turns up, whatever the world presents, it will be some sort of opportunity for practise. To make some progress with dealing better with myself, others, work, ethics, creatively.  Nothing changes if you can't face it, examine it, go with it, not against it. Over time I have gained some trust in life and in my resourcefulness to deal with it. Even though what happens is perhaps not what you think you want right now, in time this will be fine, this will be perfectly OK. You'll find yourself laughing about this very same thing in the future. But this doesn't mean you should ever roll over and go passive to it. Be grateful for the lemons, but start preparing to make the lemonade.

Gratitude, so Brother David insists, cannot be just words, it must be demonstrabe. Its genuineness is shown in ones responses and actions. The depth of your gratefulness depends upon the meaning 'the gift' has for you. Sometimes I operate on an 'idea' of what has meaning for me, trying it on for size like a hat. But meaning inhabits you, because it feels fulfilling and something to feel grateful for. Your sense of purpose may be connected to that meaning. But when its not, then it easily becomes a willful driven sense of purpose that could eventually burn you out.  

Likewise any 'idea' about what has meaning is never going to be enough. You have to be willing to relinquish the idea of having complete control of ones destiny.  Meaning enters whenever your guard is down. There may be an opportunity being thrown up here. Whether you pick up on what that is, will partly be dependent on how present, aware and willing you are. Noticing the difference between being willful and being willing, is something I've yet to fully recognise and learn.

Currently I'm holding in mind the word 'leisurely' another quality Brother David Steindl-Rast writes about. Practising a more 'leisurely' approach to a task, permitting myself whatever time it requires. To not let deadlines or perceived ideas of being productive or goals dominate. Leaving space around my work in which to enjoy the task as a task, not as a mission. 

Taking a more leisurely and playful attitude towards tasks requires some active awareness. For, as Brother David points of, in play we sing, we dance, we enjoy, without needing to know why we are singing, dancing or enjoying. Play doesn't need to have meaning brought to it, it is there in the very doing of it. Every task, however menial, has meaning locked away somewhere within it. Should we be in too much of a hurry to get it over with, we might just blink and miss it.

What Brother David has said about taking a more leisurely approach to work, has strongly resonated with me. I  recognise what he's talking about, in my own willfulness and experience of its consequences. But its easy to say these sort of things in the abstract, when I'm not currently in my normal work mode and lifestyle. This needs testing in the anvil of circumstance.

The first thing, however, that precipitates change is always awareness. Once you are aware of something you cannot put it back in the box and become unaware of it again. You could act upon it, or not act upon it.  You could try repression, but lets not go there shall we. What would a leisurely approach to a task actually feel like? Am I willing to find out?