Gratitude for Mixed Blessings

   With Thanksgiving being tomorrow, I’ve been thinking about gratitude. I’ve overheard many snippets of conversation recently about gratitude for things that are easy to be grateful for: warm place to live, car that works, etc. Gratitude is easy when we feel grateful. It’s easy to feel grateful for things we’ve decided are “good.”

    But what about the times when you don’t feel grateful? Where does gratitude come in when you’re confronted with a mixed blessing or a small disaster?

    Really, there is no such thing as an unmixed blessing. We live on a dualistic planet.  Everything here has at least two sides. Every blessing comes with a shadow.  

    Sometimes we don’t see the shadow in the blessing. Other times we don’t see the blessing in the shadow. And sometimes the blessing is the shadow. These moments, when I least likely to feel grateful, are the ones where I most need to dredge up some gratitude.

    Fortunately gratitude is much more than an emotion. The experience of feeling grateful is fleeting. Like any other emotion, it passes. The feeling is often triggered by an external event. It’s not something I can reliably create or control.

    The practice of gratitude is both sustainable and a choice I have the power to make. Practicing gratitude doesn’t necessarily make me feel grateful. Often it doesn’t change how I feel at all. It does create a space for me to decide who I want to be.

    On a personality level, we don’t have much choice about a lot of what happens in our lives. It’s a big world. Shit happens. We can choose who we want to be in relation to what’s happening.

    Even in the “this sucks” moments, I have that choice. Shifting who I am in relation to what’s happening begins with dredging up some gratitude. This practice doesn’t magically create a new emotion I can use to squash the pain and/or fear I’m feeling.  It does give me a bit of balance.

    When I’m in that “this sucks” place, my mind spins with “what ifs” fueled by my inability to see how the situation could possibly come out okay. The catastrophe factory in my head starts working overtime. I can go from this moment to being homeless and pushing a shopping cart down the street talking to myself in three seconds.

    Practicing gratitude interrupts this cycle by interjecting a new possibility. It reminds me that something else is possible. Whether or not I can tangibly identify that something is irrelevant. Remembering that something else is possible lets me move out of giving all my energy to the catastrophe factory.

    The tool I use most often to dredge up some gratitude is making a gratitude list. I have to dig to make the list. Grabbing the obvious stuff, like “I’m grateful I’m alive”, doesn’t work. I have to find something that engages me and demands presence. I have to find gratitude for mixed blessings and open myself to possibility that what looks like a disaster might be a blessing. Here are a few mixed blessings that I've put on my gratitude list recently: 

1. I am grateful the world is not as black and white as I sometimes wish it was. 
2. I am grateful the Universe is smarter than I am. 
3. I am grateful for knowing how to sit still and be present when I'm uncomfortable. 
4. I am grateful that what things look like right now is not necessarily how they'll look tomorrow. 

    Another gratitude practice I engage in regularly is saying "thank you." It's a small action that helps me not take things for granted. I thank grocery store clerks, wait staff and the barrista at my favorite coffee shop. Yes, they're just doing their jobs and I appreciate it. I thank my friends. I thank strangers. When I'm not sure who to thank, I thank the Universe. The challenge comes in remembering say "thank you" for the opportunities that show up looking like big messes.