Does gratitude ever lead you to guilt? That sounds off.
But by the time I've exhausted the list-making approach of gratitude, in the middle of my gratefulness for my lack of gonorrhea and a cardboard house I start to think:
What did I do to deserve my big life full of stuff and opportunity? And the answer is always nothing. So I try to make sense of it, and give myself guilt, telling myself all the things I should do because I'm lucky enough to have all the opposites of the things I'm grateful I don't have.
It's hard to accept abundance.
It's hard to believe there is enough, and that even though I don't deserve it I can embrace it, live in it, and even increase it. It's hard to get away from my picture-perfect me to not only accept what I currently am, but accept, simultaneously, the vastness of what I could be. It's easier to make a list of things I should do that will give me a blue ribbon.
Easier to make gratitude lists long, long, long, so as to appear so thankful. So as to convince myself what I am. I am grateful, I am going to do big things, you know. It seems better than acknowledging the more frequent blah days where I don't do anything spectacular.
But I'm learning that even if all I do is feed myself physically and emotionally and soulfully on those days, I am those few steps closer to living more fully inside the mondo-ness of my potential.
Even when I'm not checking off items on a shiny list, I am still doing important work. It's just kind that can't be checked off that good.
But by the time I've exhausted the list-making approach of gratitude, in the middle of my gratefulness for my lack of gonorrhea and a cardboard house I start to think:
What did I do to deserve my big life full of stuff and opportunity? And the answer is always nothing. So I try to make sense of it, and give myself guilt, telling myself all the things I should do because I'm lucky enough to have all the opposites of the things I'm grateful I don't have.
It's hard to accept abundance.
It's hard to believe there is enough, and that even though I don't deserve it I can embrace it, live in it, and even increase it. It's hard to get away from my picture-perfect me to not only accept what I currently am, but accept, simultaneously, the vastness of what I could be. It's easier to make a list of things I should do that will give me a blue ribbon.
Easier to make gratitude lists long, long, long, so as to appear so thankful. So as to convince myself what I am. I am grateful, I am going to do big things, you know. It seems better than acknowledging the more frequent blah days where I don't do anything spectacular.
But I'm learning that even if all I do is feed myself physically and emotionally and soulfully on those days, I am those few steps closer to living more fully inside the mondo-ness of my potential.
Even when I'm not checking off items on a shiny list, I am still doing important work. It's just kind that can't be checked off that good.
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