Day 63: Gratitude

How many ways are there to express gratitude?There are so many ways that you couldn’t possibly exhaust all of them in one lifetime.Gratitude has no attachment and something that can definitely make this world a better place.In many areas of India, saying ‘Thank you’ is uncommon.People don’t hold the door for you, let your make a left turn in traffic and don’t care if you need off the elevator first.

You have to be this change. You have to hold the door open when you are trying to leave with such gratitude that you are grateful for every person that works through the door. You have to resist the urge to think that people are ungrateful and rude. Furthermore, you have to not be affected in any cell in your body. While standing there, you must smile regardless of who says Namaste or not. Most likely no one will.

People live their horns here in Mumbai traffic. Even at 5:30am, I am always surprised to see the cars trying to cut in front of each other and honking their horns. At that time, it hard not to think of them as rude. They have a complete disregard for all of the adults and children sleeping in the towering buildings above or the tin shacks below. The motorbikes and vehicles all honk at you if you are paused for even a brief second. You have to be grateful. Perhaps they are warning the other cars that they are there. Perhaps they have some emergency that they need to get to. 

I don’t think I will ever understand people that get off on the highest floor cramming in the front of the elevator. Equally, I will never understand the people shoving their way to the elevator doors without the ones already on it getting off first. I always smile and say ‘Excuse me.’ The gratitude comes in the fact that they are sharing this moment with you and teaching a valuable lesson unconsciously. They teach me patience and understanding.

With all the problems that exist in this world, it is an understatement to say that being grateful is really all we have left at the end of the day. Finding little ways to be grateful make your life more worthwhile and you start to pick up on more subtle things to be grateful for. You start doing more for everything around you not just people. You start to learn that all the pushing and rushing has a meaning or a lesson. You learn that being grateful is all that I have and all that I am.

Day 58: Relationships

In our thought sharing group, we shared ​our ideas of what a good relationship was.  We shared things about betrayal in intimate relationships, we shared about experiences about friends trying to cheat us and we all shared the same belief that we can’t change any person except ourself.  It was very comforting to know that in these common experience, we also shared the same emotions.  Our conclusions were all very different regardless of the corner we came from.

Kittens are a happy place.  These kittens were presumed dead about a week ago.  There are now 5 of them.  Teaching me Dharma, to do an act without getting anything in return.

In this sharing of thoughts I was speaking about letting the other person not have power over you anymore.  I shared my experience in thinking that it sad to think that a person has to constantly run and hide and look over his shoulder somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.  He believes in who he is so much that ​it is more important to be himself than to be truthful.  He has to protect himself from the very problem he has created. 

I want to do good in this world and because that very fact, there will be an equally opposite force trying to prevent me from doing good.  These people have to coexist in the same life.  I wish nothing ill  of anyone who has done me wrong just as I hope that no one wishes me ill for the wrong I have done to them in my life.  I wish this on a level that I now think of the grass and the violence I impose on it by simply walking.  To be present to this love is what they mean by light.  ​

I have actually worked very hard on this forgiveness that it has exhausted and consumed me.  Another cheat will get away with what they have done and I leave a with a lesson that equates him to a person that just needs to know love in his life.  ​It makes me very sad to know that there is so much hate in this world but even more disturbing is the deprivation of love that permeates this planet.  However, these both have to exist and there is no need to do anything about it.  Just like in the lesson that Joy has to learn about the character, Sadness, in the Disney hit, Inside Out.  

I feel an overall grasp in managing my emotions.  This is present also in my asana practice.  I keep going from feeling secure to a place of I don’t know who I am.  Perhaps this is because I am completely looking how I live everyday through a microscope and finding things that not only useless but toxic.  Just like a cardboard box that sits without being cleaned out or organized, it will grow bugs they will eat anything they can including the cardboard itself.  So, it’s spring have you done the cleaning of your emotional closet?​