Mindful gratitude

My gratitude story for the day:  Cows are really BIG.  I walk by a farm on my work out that has these silly fluffy ducks with stickin' up hairdo's milling around outside.  When I see them,  I need to visit them and watch them scatter a little bit.  Wouldn't you?  So this morning they were out by the barn and I had a close up visit.  I can't imagine how little ole me was able to also spook the cows by the barn into a bovine stampede.  Honest.  Didn't do that on purpose. And no fences were damaged or anything, but it sure gets your heart rate up.  And, not kidding, cows are BIG. 

Now, why gratitude is such a really good thing:  In a nutshell, what you pay attention to grows.  And you notice what you believe or expect. So, being human, it's only natural that what's wrong with the picture gets our attention.  Plus, it's programmed right into our DNA to do that.  Imagine your ancestor out in the prairie looking for nuts and berries.  The grass nearby rustles but the wind isnt' blowing.  If the tendency to notice that something's wrong was missing, that guy is right out of the gene pool.  He's that tiger's breakfast.  So, since there are way more people than saber toothed tigers, we do not need to focus on what is wrong with this picture. Instinct helps us along with that just fine.  In fact, we do it so well in order to prepare ourselves for the next bad thing that suddenly that's one of our habits of thinking, a constant companion.  Worry.  Mistrust.  Judgment.  Gossip.  Suffering.

If something is wrong, trust me, we will know it soon enough. You do not need to practice looking for it.  You are a fine tuned machine when it comes to that.  And if you live, being human means something really wrong will happen more than once or twice - usually when it's mighty inconvenient and utterly unwelcome.  You need to work at finding what is right with the picture.  Hard.  Daily.  Or risk getting all the juice in life out of being ticked off or worried or being a tragic victim.  All of us feel like our own suffering is louder and greater than other people's. And it sure is juicy.  But as Gran says about the "Why me?" folks,  "Well, why not you?"  Even in the midst of great suffering, you can be grateful.  Try it.