Day 28 of a daily gratitude practice: On hunger

We are hungry.

We are blessed with abundance, yet we hunger.

Gratitude for fishing in winter on the West Coast. (Hadi Dadashian photo)

We hunger for peace of mind, and peace in our time.

We are blessed with plenty, yet we want to be empty.

We are so grateful for the people who saved our lives, who risked everything to rescue us, that we are always hungry to do more to help them.

We are especially grateful, every moment, for the people in our circle of love, who kept us — keep us still — from the abyss.  They have withstood such pain, just to protect us with that love.  Our gratitude knows no end for their patience and understanding and remarkable kindness.

We are blessed with good health, yet we are surrounded by so much injury and illness, we want to do more to soothe wounds, whether psychological, physical or spiritual — or, in the case of many wounded warriors, sadly, all three.

Our gratitude is boundless and we are setting out to discover the bounds of our energy.

When you read this today, and think of a daily gratitude practice, know this.

It will transform your life.

You will, as Carl Jung advised, learn to break down your life (ego) rather than building it up.

At the end of this 28-day exercise, we hope you are learning the transformative power of gratitude too.

We are filled with gratitude, and hope you can find your way to that fullness too.

Please spread gratitude today, however empty or full you are feeling.

The world around you hungers for it.

With gratitude, always, to the American men and women in uniform (scrubs too!) who saved our lives on March 4, 2002.  If you share our gratitude, please thank someone in the military today.  And/or donate to the Wounded Warrior Project, or any non-profit that helps military families.

Day 27, gratitude practice: Reaching out in gratitude

Gratitude can begin with a touch, and it can be life-saving.

planet gratitude©

We know this because of the hands of then-Major Mike Wright, whose warm touch on a very cold night in Afghanistan helped save our lives.

One touch, one prayer.

Just when we thought Kathleen was dying from a terrorist attack in the desert, Wright reached out and touched her hands.

It was a touch so powerful that it helped save her life, and transformed our lives as much as that would-be terrorist’s homemade bomb.

Mike went on to become a colonel, then retired from the Air Force after an illustrious career.

He recalls that touch with four words he has repeated often in churches and other public forums:  “It was a miracle.”

We took him kayaking in Canada for the first time, to show our thanks.  Our family showed its gratitude by adopting Mike and his family, and his extended family has become our military family.

Mike’s prayer out loud in the middle of the Afghanistan desert — amid the rumbling of a dying plane — is memorable still because of his first touch.

Research shows touch is one of the most powerful ways we can show compassion to a stranger and bond with others — from babies to basketball players.

We’ve worked with people whose depression or PTS (post-traumatic stress) was so severe, they couldn’t bear to be touched, because it seemed to sharpen their agony.

Yet a single touch can be the difference between tragedy and coming back from the brink.

Just ask the Colonel.

With gratitude and love, always, to Mike Wright and his — OUR — extended military family.  We owe you nothing less than our lives.

Psychologist Matthew Hertenstein at Indiana’s DePauw University is considered the foremost authority on the power of touch.  Search his academic writing and popular books to learn more, at the Touch and Emotion Lab.

Day 26, gratitude practice: Listen, listen in gratitude

We love sound.

Grateful for the sound of gentle waves purring against South Puget Sound sands. (Hadi Dadashian photo)

We love the sound of the ocean when it’s still, lapping at the edges of land as gently as a kitten’s purr.

We love the sound of the ocean when it’s roaring, when the wind is whipping up the waves and sending the sand in little tornado-twists around our ankles.

We love the sound of the Pacific when surfers are screaming through curls, when a humpback whale breaches, when dolphins crest the waves over and over again near us.

A radio producer freelancing for NPR recently shared her love of sound with us, when we asked the new graduate why she picked radio, perceived by many as a dying medium.

Sound, she said.  I love sound.

She loves sound so much she gathers with other sound-loving freelancers to produce their own radio channel.  We celebrate their passion.

We hear a baby’s gurgling and fall in love.  We hear a baby cooing and giggling and we’re in love.

Today, walking among the pines, we heard two — two! — woodpeckers knocking away at the trunk, seemingly as exhilarated by the sudden Pacific Northwest sunshine as we were.

Best sound today?

The sound of a beloved one, caught on a cellphone message, releasing joy bottled up too long.

War stilled that laughter for awhile.  Peace has released it.

We are grateful, ever-grateful for that sound of joy.

TOMORROW:  The importance of touch

Day 25, gratitude practice: Staying the course among the ungrateful

Gratitude is a state of mind, a state of peace.

Grateful for California redwoods, during the rainy season. (Hadi Dadashian photo)

Peace of mind.

So, we’re not surprised when encountering people so negative about their world that they can’t see any reason to be grateful — or express it.

We’re always grateful, finding something to appreciate even in the worst of times.  Gratitude in the best of times is easy; staying the course among the ungrateful is more difficult.

Yet gratitude is in us, around us, and lifts us.  There is nothing so bad we can’t find good in it (most of the time), or, perhaps, in spite of it.

Ah, love and joy.

May your life be full of both today.

Gratitude practice, day 24: Quiet, so very quiet

There are days when you expect to be grateful to the skies because of a long-anticipated, larger-than-life event.

Grateful to be on the water at Point Ruston, WA. (Hadi Dadashian photo)

Real life intrudes.

So gratitude shrinks to being ever-so-quiet.

Gratitude rules, no matter what you throw at it.

NEXT:  How to stay grateful among the ungrateful.

Day 23 of a gratitude practice: Overcome by gratitude

One of the best elements of a gratitude practice is being open to more gratitude.

It’s listening to your heart, and feeling it grow.

Service to one’s country isn’t always recognized, but our gratitude grows. (Kathleen Kenna photo)

Believe this.

There may be times when we think our sorrow can’t be any deeper, or when the hurt can’t be more painful.

We seize on a reason, then, to be thankful.

We divert our self-absorption, our whining, our self-pity into something beyond ourselves.

We’re reminded of this today because of public service, of good work done for our country without recognition or praise.

We are overcome by gratitude, and our hearts grow.

With gratitude to all those who serve — especially those whose good work is not known or appreciated by many.

Day 22 of a gratitude practice: Babies and more babies

We are waiting for a special baby, yet we are surrounded by babies.

planet gratitude©

Work on a military base, live in a military community, and you’ll meet more babies — from Africa to Asia to America — than you ever have before.

We greet new parents (they’re conspicuous by boundless joy) on our daily walks, at the office, and in the neighborhood.

Most parents are happy to let you coo — we don’t try to touch.  We ask if the little one is their first, and s/he almost always is.  Again, with the conspicuous joy.

We always thank new parents, and they get it.  This stranger is the future of our community, our country, our planet.

We’re sending a silent message that we appreciate loving parents taking care to keep their babies healthy and safe.  We always thank the parents for sharing their joy with us, strangers delighted by families.

There are so many babies in our military community that people joke there must be something in the water.  It seems to us that the parents grow younger …

We’re waiting for a special baby in our family, the first great-grandchild in the three continents where our relatives live.

We’re grateful for this sweet anticipation.

TOMORROW:  Public service and being overcome by gratitude

Gratitude practice, Day 21: Taking a page from the calendar

planet gratitude©

We bought one of those little desk calenders after Christmas to amuse ourselves each morning, and it’s become part of our daily gratitude practice.

The year began with this advice:  “Never chew gum or eat corn on the cob on a first date.”

Who’s to argue?

We’re grateful for Life’s Little Instruction Calendar (Vol. XVIII) because it makes us smile each day at the small desk we share in a small apartment.

(This is a test of coupledom:  If a photographer and a writer can share a desk, they can share anything.  Perhaps even corn on the cob.  But not on the first date.)

In the past two months, we’ve had advice about boating, fishing (“know how to bait a hook”), dinner parties, office shoes, praying, and, as a certain past president would say, ‘conversating.’

“When a dinner guest, resist the desire to debate” and “When family members are talking to you, don’t be distracted by anything else.”

We’re thankful for H. Jackson Brown Jr. and international publisher Andrews McMeel Publishing (Kansas City-Sydney-London) for this handy cube of advice each day.

Some of the tips are sage; others are hilarious.

H. Jackson Brown Jr. helped us appreciate that shared wisdom and shared laughter are the foundation of a daily gratitude practice.

The proof is on the page for Friday, February 21:  “You are the most important person in someone’s life.  Don’t let them down.”

We won’t.

NEXT:  Babies and a daily gratitude practice

 

Rest, rock ‘n roll … on to Day 20

When pain slows us, we rest and we rock ‘n roll.

One way to handle pain: Play! (Hadi Dadashian photo)

This is where a gratitude practice helps.

Pain can sometimes be debilitating, so rest and ice/heat/both are usually the best solution.

Pain:  Your body’s yellow light

So we go to the library, and load up with books-to-be-read-while-resting and curl up next to the fireplace.

This is not defeat.

This is resting, in gratitude, for the pain signal that teaches us to slow and take good care.

There is always gratitude in healing.

And there’s always gratitude for a good read.

And then.

Then there’s great gratitude for the strength to transcend, to take pain literally to a higher level.

We gathered loved ones and went to a mountain.

There, Kathleen tried the one thing she’s been burning to try since a terrorist attack almost killed us.

Downhill skiing.

Never discount the power of gratitude.

We don’t.

Day 13: Why we were singing gratitudes after doing taxes

About halfway through a month-long diary on a gratitude practice, you wouldn’t expect us to be singing gratitudes about the tax man.

planet gratitude©

But we have to give credit where credit is due:  Tax Associate John Glassman made us grateful to be filling our annual, joint tax return.

Glassman didn’t embarrass us because we barely had enough income the past three years to pay taxes.

He honored us by saying how great it was that we’ve finally landed employment.

Glassman didn’t humiliate us by asking — almost anyone would/many have already — why our expenses for freelance travel writing and photography were so high and the income so low.

He said that must be a great job.  It is.

He didn’t pretend it must be a hobby.  It’s a blessing, every day.

Unemployment:  Blessing or humiliation?

Glassman understood that well-educated, well-traveled professionals make decisions in mid-life that don’t fit conventions of any kind.

Our careers certainly don’t.

We didn’t plan to be unemployed for three years.  We didn’t call ourselves “under-employed” because we didn’t earn a liveable income doing something we love — writing and taking pictures.

We managed.

In the past three years, in two states, we’ve had our taxes done for free by retired accountants and IRS officials — through AARP –and they were always perplexed by what seemed to be a lack of ambition.

We were trying to find full-time employment.  We’ve always been employed.  Between us, we applied for more than 400 jobs.  It doesn’t matter. This was a jobless recovery, unlike any other.

Life happens, and we got hit — with millions of others — in a recession not of our making.

We managed.

When we initially tried to get our taxes done for free this year, we were so humiliated by the incessant questions — “but you couldn’t have had a loss! how could you live like that?” — that Kathleen stormed out, in tears, humiliated and hurt to her core.

We drove straight to H&R Block and thankfully were sent directly to tax expert John Glassman.

Not only did we discover that some accountants have hearts of gold, but Glassman used humor and kindness to deal with our first, part-of-a-year, full-time income in three years.

“You must be grateful to have work,” he said gently.

Yes.

And then, showing more compassion than we’ve ever encountered in any country where we’ve filed taxes in decades past, Glassman revealed a bigger heart than we would have suspected.

“You must be grateful to have health insurance,” he added, “and good benefits.”

Yes and yes.

Oh, and did we mention that we received our largest tax refund in years?  Within a week of e-filing?  We’re using it for something very special, that we’ll announce at the end of this month.

With gratitude to Tax Associate John Glassman at H&R Block in a place called UP!  (University Place, WA).  Want your taxes done by a man with heart and humor? Email him at john.glassman@tax.hrblock.com, or call 253.565.1132.  Please tell him that two very grateful clients sent you.