Awakened Sense of Gratitude

I had been sort of beating myself up because I wasn't feeling the same sense of gratefulness as I was last year. Where was my gratitude? As if since I had felt it before, I should always feel that way. If we could only bottle things from one moment and bring them to the next. But it doesn't work that way.

So, I think myself to be in a funny space around the concept of gratitude this year, but maybe that's because I've never been precisely here before.

In the past, it seems that I've valued the extreme, the rash, the high… Or even the low, the disappointment or the depression. Feeling the extremes meant that I was feeling something.

Well, I've learned that feelings are so varied, and many of them are subtle. It was actually a symptom of my coarseness that a feeling needed to be extreme for me to register it. And feelings are what provide a sense of depth in experience. Intellectual perceptions can turn me on, but they ultimately fall flat in the currency of my inner realm which I feel must be connected to my values. I value feeling life. Reducing life to concepts and ideas hurts in the realm of experience.

So maybe I'm just feeling things differently right now. It seems good. An expanded range of awareness… Much clearer. The resolution of my emotional barometer has become more finely tuned. What was once big chunks of feelings—leading to a bumpy ride—are now a finer sand.

I have softened, yielded my demands in favor of living the life I currently experience.

And for this emotional sobriety and clarity, I am grateful.


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