Attitudes of Gratitude

January 6, 2020January 6, 2020Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Meditations, Muse and Flow, Reflections, Writing Tags: Attitudes of Gratitude, blessing, children, Choices, connection, Future, Gratitude, hope, kindness, List, love, Meditation, Patience, Repair, Unedited, voice 29 Comments

Photo: A.L.

I chose to write this response to Dawn as a stream of consciousness piece. No edits. No pauses. No revisiting or rethinking or rephrasing. Typos and mismatched sentences and mixed metaphors and all. It is what it is. And so it is. Here goes, some ten things I am grateful for.

You. I am thankful for all of you whom I met in the blog-lands in 2019, and for those I’d met before but got to know better in 2019. I’m thankful for the glorious, tender, poetic, empathic, wise, witty, funny, delightful, mysterious things you write and post and share. For all of you who love. For all of you I love. For the kindness shown to me.
Kindness. I cannot overemphasize how grateful I am for kindness. For the big things people do for each other, yes. Opening one’s home to the needy. Giving of what one has enough of to those who do not. Going all out for someone else. Yes. All that. But also for the seemingly small acts of kindness: Holding the door for someone, making eye contact and smiling, paying for someone’s coffee, carrying someone’s groceries to the car, babysitting someone’s child so they can have a moment for themselves, clearing snow from someone else’s car, slowing down at the street crossing so someone who is slower or frail does not need to feel rushed lest the light changes before they are on the other side, being the driver who waits patiently till that slow-crosser gets safely to the other side … It all matters. Especially now.
Connection. Through the big and small acts of kindness. Through the words we say and the things we do and the words we don’t say and the things we could’ve done and decided not to, because it was the better thing to do to refrain. To think not only of the immediate gratification but the long term realities of who we are and what we want to know about our own choices.
Choices. For being able to have them. For being able to exercise them. For being able to know what they are and not take them for granted. For remembering those who fought for them and taking on the charge of fighting to help those who have far less choice, so they, too, have the choices they should have.
Patience. Am grateful for learning a bit more of it. For knowing I’ve got more to learn and that I can take the time to become better at it. Patience with others who don’t see as I do. Patience with others who need me to see as they do and even if they have a difficult time accepting I do not see eye to eye with them and likely won’t, and yet that it is okay to disagree and no one needs to feel as if they’d lost face or have less worth. Patience with the things that take time that I don’t always feel I have. Patience with myself, especially. With my body’s limitations. With others’ human limitations. With the realities of pain and the cost of histories and with the urgency to know what the future holds, even if I know I can’t.
The future. Grateful for the opportunity to work toward one. To be part of what change can be done that may help ensure the next generations will have one. To be part of believing that good matters and action matters and small choices matter, and that together we can be more light than doom, more responsible than victimizing, more repairing than damaging.
Repair. Am grateful for the trust placed in each breath we breathe. For the potential to repair: relationships, the fractures of mistakes, the misunderstandings that come with complicated communications and different points of views and variations on information and the tug and pull of forces that may wish to harm, but we need not succumb to. Because we are better than that, and stronger at the seams of our repair. For the potential to hold hope and action for the repair of some aspects of this Earth, too.
Hope. I am deeply, deeply, deeply thankful for hope.
Children. I cannot imagine this world without them. There would be no world without them. They represent, embody, live, breathe, exude hope.
Love, and the power of voice. I know. Two in one. For they are often one. Written, spoken, expressed love and voice. The kind that comes through in actions, in thoughts, in educating, in offering help, in wisdom, in words, in gestures, in the myriad ways that make us who we are. And help us grow.

May every day in 2020 — and in the decade unfurling, new and brimming with what can be still be born — bring us all that we are grateful for. And the courage and power and strength and stamina and magic to dream and trust and do and move beyond.

With a heart full of tremulousness and gratitude,

Na’ama.

(Adding here a link to last year’s list. Because it made me smile to read it. I’m quite predictable to myself, I am. I am.)

For Dawn’s “The 2019 Attitude of Gratitude List”

Wrap It Up In Gratitude

January 2, 2019January 2, 2019Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Good stuff!, Life and love, Muse and Flow, Professional Development, Reflections, Writing Tags: 2018, 2019, Annual Review, Attitude of gratitude, Being Human, Grateful, Gratitude, List, new year, Taking Stock, Writing Challenge, Writing prompt 30 Comments

affection appreciation decoration design

Photo by Carl Attard on Pexels.com

Me being a softy for all manner of new beginnings, wrapping ups, looking back and facing forward, I’ve decided to participate in this lovely idea of a blog-to-blog blanket of gratitude, friendship, and community. Want to join? Read how here (also, thank you, Dale – for the idea).

The short of it? Set a timer for 15 minutes and let loose: write, detail, list, describe and put your gratitude into words. No edits needed. No wrong answers. No test at the end. Nothing to lose and everything to gain.

If you are so inclined, read my unedited, uncensored Gratitude Wrap Up — here I Go!

Family. A blessing even wordy-me hasn’t enough words for.
Friends. For all the gifts of laughter and joy.
Joy. Because life is so much richer with it.
Life. Without it, there would be nothing.
This planet. Without it there would be no life as we know it.
Oxygen. I adore the stuff. Can’t imagine living without it.
Water. The obvious stuff, but also in rivers and oceans. Especially the beach.
Waves. In the sea. In the ebb and flow of life. In the ups and downs of everything. In hellos and even in the sweet sorrow of goodbyes (for there had to have been a hello for there to be a goodbye).
Light and the gift of sight.
Colors. In nature. In emotion. In people. In energy. In food. In flowers.
Flowers. Not so much the cut ones in bouquets as the ones still living, blooming loudly without shame or apology.
Apologies. For making room for amends and for allowing humility, humanity, empathy, fallibility, and compassion.
Compassion. I’d put it first. But this is unedited and … it really fits everywhere. Any day. Any time.
Time. To live. To breathe. To be. To learn. To write.
Learning. For there is so much more to know!
Writing. Because, well, it is like breathing.
Breathing. It’s lovely. Also, see #6 …
Children. For everything they are and the hope they hold and the laughter they bring and the teachers they are.
Hope. The hope you feel. The hope you know. The hope you may be able to give someone, someday. The hope you might’ve forgotten but now remember.
Memories. So many of those. Some I might’ve wished to never know, but since they are part of me, I’d rather know than not, for they are all a part of me and made me into who I am today.
Today. Every day. There would be not past or present or future without it.
Tomorrow. For exemplifying hope by working on becoming a today and by that showing trust in what can be.
Trust. For the depth of connection it allows, especially as it is never something I take for granted, having known betrayal.
Connection. No person is truly an island. We need our shores to touch those of others, through waves and flow and ebb and sun and rain and heart and sound.
Sound. For the gifts of hearing, listening, and understanding.
Comprehension. For this world is complicated enough, and I am grateful to know some meaning.
Meaning. For life. For love. For connection. For work.
Work. Because to live is to work. Not just in what one defines as a job, but in what one can define their life’s work to be, and the glimpses of the plan.
Plans. Love them. Sometimes I am not sure I feel the love, but I know I do, someplace, or I’d have never made the plans …
Love.
Love.
Love.
Repetition. Some things get better the more you know them. The more you do them. The more time you spend in them. They improve with age.
Aging. Seriously. I’ve earned every wrinkle. I’ve labored in the sun for every freckle. I’ve stitched every bit of wisdom, sometimes from tatters of harder times to make a quilt of who I am.
Being me. Not because I’m so special, but because we each are. And I’m happy for the opportunity to be me. Just because (also, I’m a limited edition. They broke the mold after making me, so it’ll be a waste to not make the most of it even if just because I’m super curious to see how I’ll unfold).
Curiosity. Can’t help it. Don’t want to change it. Wonder where it’s all coming from.
Wonder. It keeps me on my toes. It keeps my ‘awwww’ and ‘wow’ and ‘whoa’ muscles working.
Muscles. I’ve got the skinny-Minnie edition of those, so I’m grateful for every fiber: they keep me upright, they keep my fingers typing (yeah!). They keep my heart pumping.
Heart. In all its manifestations. Even broken hearts are better than being heartless. I’m so so grateful to have heart and to know so many people who have golden ones.
Gold. Not the metal, but the color – in the sunrise, in the sunset, in the sparkle, in the light.
Sunrise and sunset. They never fail to quicken my heart and expand my soul.
Soul. It’s older than this body. It’s wiser than this life. It’s been hanging around this universe a while, and it’s been traveling in a little cluster with other souls, most of whom I totally adore.
The universe. Don’t understand it. Can’t grasp the size of it. Not sure I really ‘get’ how it went ‘bang’ and where it is expanding or collapsing into, but I sure am grateful for it. May even be grateful for extraterrestrials. Come to think of it, I bet I already know a few such travelers.
Travel. To new-to-me and known-to-me places. It expands my mind and nourishes my spirit.
Nourishment. In all its forms but especially in its most basic, which I know so many in this world still struggle to have access to, even as there should be more than enough for all of us. Having healthy food isn’t something to take for granted.
Health. This, too, in all its forms and in its most fundamental. I’ve been blessed to know both health and some of its challenges. It keeps me grateful. It keeps me aware.
Awareness. Being conscious is a good thing. Seriously. I know what I’m talking about.
Talking. I’m SO grateful for the gift of gab. I’d implode if I didn’t have words.
Words. Language. Communication. My elements. My calling. My profession. My path.
Journey. Especially that of life. With all of you who cross my path and join my path and whose path I am allowed to join. I’m so so grateful.