Gratitude/Clear a Space at the Head of the Table

Monday, Monday, can't trust that day!  Actually it's fine...I had a rewarding weekend and I hope you did too.   Friday, a sad evening.  Was supposed to hang with Christ at Schaller's, the bar I sing at, but he cancelled because of the snow.  I decided to brave the roads, knowing that if I stayed home I could descend into sadness. But sitting there in that south side bar alone, at a table, singing occasionally was just marginally better than being home alone.   I was grateful when the evening was over and bed claimed me.  Saturday, I woke to a note that I wrote to myself the night before labeled "Good Morning Merry Sunshine".  Ha!  I actually called myself Merry Sunshine!   It made me smile to read that note to myself with suggestions on how I could make Saturday a terrific, productive day.  The day was chill and I decided beef stew was required - it was just a beef stew kind of day.   I sent the word out to the tenants below me, friends Janet and Kurt, Liza and James and Josh that I was cooking and that the kitchen was open.  I then went about the business of putting on a mini, spur of the moment party and made food aplenty including carrot cake #4.

Then yesterday a day that has been circled big on my calendar for six months.  It was Patrick's birthday and my hope that we would be in a good "moved on place" by now, and be able to sit across the table from each other as just friends and celebrate the transition to friendom wasn't realized.  I sent him word last week that I was not in that moved on place yet, wasn't ready for the friend thing just yet, and so we didn't do dinner.  But I did drop off the crack carrot cake and a few books at his house on the way to see a concert in Naperville with friend Pam.  He called on my drive home from dropping Pam off and I pulled to the side of the road and we talked for over an hour.  It was the first time we had a talk like that since November.  It was good.

What's on my mind today is something that crystallized for me when I talked to him last night.  I told him he still visits my head many times a day, that I can't keep those visits from happening, but that I can decide how the visit will go.  I described on this blog before that, when thoughts of him come to me, I force myself to smile and think happy thoughts of the time we had together.  Now, most of my quiet minutes "with him" are a source of joy and inspiration rather than sadness.  I'm not saying it's not bittersweet - it is, but the difference is I don't feel tragic and wrung dry when the visitation is over.

This is what I realized.  The best emotion is joy - euphoria, happiness.   The second best emotion is sadness and pain.  Both these emotions light up your brain and make you feel alive and energized, even though they are opposite.  The worst emotion is feeling nothing, flat-lining - that empty void feeling.  Better to feel excruciating pain than to feel blank, right?  But there is a fourth emotion you can summon, that is almost as good as happiness - certainly more healthy than prolonged sadness and infinitely better than the dead feeling of nothingness.  That emotion is gratitude.

Gratitude is something that's available to all of us, all the time.   It just needs to be exercised.  It requires that you use your zoom out lens and get some perspective on the challenges in front of you.  It has to be summoned and invited in, made an honored guest, seated at the head of the table. Picture gratitude as your wisest self that you've invited for dinner.  He is the best of your selves.   Your other selves sit around the table - they are still present, they clamor for attention, they should be allowed to talk, but when gratitude speaks the chatter should stop to make a quiet space for that highest of selves - gratitude should be revered and listened to.

So, Patrick.  I love that man.  I think I always will.  We are weathering a tough breakup with love, compassion and wisdom.  Looks like we will make the transition to treasured friends which we both know is very rare and wonderful.  It's not easy, though.  Some days I wish he had been an asshole so that I could have just hated him and moved on easier.  He's not - he's a good man and we have some kind of future together it seems.   I am deeply grateful for him in my life.

Challenge today is, of course, thinking about using the gratitude lens in your own life.  When you are in the middle of things, doing hand to hand combat with your day, your week, your relationships, you sometimes lose perspective, right?  You find yourself operating from your lower self emotions (anger, fear, greed, uncertainty).   You are pissed off or pissing off, and you know it's not right - the pushing, pulling, polarizing.  Because you're right in the thick of it, you don't see an alternative way of feeling and being.  But there is always an alternative if you zoom out and get a more distant perspective.   It's then you can clear a space at the head of the table and invite gratitude.

Sorry to preach today, but this is important.

Peace,
Sarah

Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.

D. Bonhoeffer