Living A Life In Gratitude

"Living In Gratitude Instead Of Desire", that is No-Impact Man's post for today. If you have never read or heard of him before, go on over to his blog, he's on my sidebar. You have to love a guy, his wife, daughter and dog who are trying to be no impact in Manhattan. Here was a part of his post today:

'This could be totally wrong, but I’m guessing that the decline of religious life in our culture has brought with it a decline in gratitude. Not that I am laying some sort of a religious trip on everyone—I am the first to cop to not maintaining an attitude of thankfulness.

But I do feel as though we (and I include me) have come to worship desire. Here in the United States, I sometimes despair that our state religion is consumption and our main prayer is for more.

I’m not even religious, but I sense from people I’ve known who take the spiritual aspects of their religions to heart an emphasis on being grateful for what God or the Universe or the Oneness has given them rather than on what they don’t have. I admire that. I’d like to have more of that in myself, because I, too, often find that my prayer, if I’m not careful, is for more.

Here is what I think: that being grateful for what I have makes me want less. Wanting less makes me consume less. Consuming less makes me treat the planet more kindly. The equation goes, therefore, gratitude equals kindness.

And also, it turns out, gratitude equals happiness.

One way to cultivate happiness is to keep a “gratitude journal, a diary in which subjects write down things for which they are thankful. [Researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky] has found that taking the time to conscientiously count their blessings once a week significantly increased subjects' overall satisfaction with life over a period of six weeks, whereas a control group that did not keep journals had no such gain.” ...No Impact Man

I have kept a gratitude journal in the past. At the time I had thought that I didn't have much to be grateful for except, you know, my kids, our health, our home..., but guess what, it was amazing the things that I just couldn't deny that I was grateful for. Like the sun, yoga, traffic lights, the guy who cut me off on the road, but because of him, I slowed down and realized that life is not a race or how about nightfall and rest and knitting, there are so many things that I am grateful for. I have a few journals of my gratefulness. I, for some reason stopped writing it down, I probably needed to get a new notebook or something, who knows, but I now have a new journal and for that I am grateful!

To all my friends, my family and all the people who have yet to come into my life...I am grateful!!

Until tomorrow: Knit-Laugh-Enjoy-and be Grateful!!