Being Thankful

It's too long since I regularly "blogged" and I have lost many of my friends on the journey. But that's ok, perhaps I will make some new ones. I've not been in full health and there's a reason for that which I don't yet fully understand. Understanding will come though.

Today's post is about thankfulness and mindfulness. It will strike a chord with those of you who follow a religion. To others it will sound overtly "Pollyanna-ish" and perhaps some will want to scream at me. To let you in, I have been through all of those reactions so just accept your reaction fopr what it is. That's mindfulness.

So my subject is to be thankful. There definitely is something to be learned in every situation that life throws at us. When all is going our way, we rarely stop to consider what we are learning. Perhaps that is becuase the soul is not developing, perhaps it is too easy. When life is tough, sometimes a small voice nags us to understand that every part of life is a journey and that we will be picking up experiences and learning from them. Yet when we are in physical or emotional pain or mental anguish engulfs us, then how on earth can we take anything positive from where we are?

That's when the screaming voice can take over and want to cut down any self-righteous, patronising do-gooder who looks on sympathetically and tells us to "be positive."

AAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!

But if you look closely, there is an ingredient missing from the recipe and it is TIME. In the thick of it, in the middle of the fight, all you can do is protect yourself from the blows and strike out when you get the opportunity. Only later when you analyse it with your coach and watch the video footage will you be able to gain the perspective you need to really learn from the mistakes you made in the ring.

So try this now. Look backwards in time and pick a time or situation or a person which you would rather miss out if you could play the film of your life again. With the perspective of time, examine the video footage and see if you can identify the positive aspects. What did you do well? But most of all, what are you thankful for?

I would rather forget and miss out the experience of marriage to my first husband but on so many days I have reason to feel thankful for the time we spent together. He taught me to cook! To cook real, fresh food and to experiment, to not be afraid in the kitchen. I still have the cookery book he patronisingly bought me the week before our wedding - it is a firm favourite of mine.

If I take this concept further and extrapolate the effect of learning to cook, I can thank my ex-husband for my health. Ten years of eating unprocessed, fresh food has doubtless had a positive effect on my health. It is a strange feeling to thank him for that but I cannot deny it.

Finding something positive in a bad situation liberates us from the negative emotional effects of that unfortunate experience. For some people there may be much healing required but the exercise of thankfulness can be a start.

Try that today.