Where has all the gratitude gone?

I grew up with my father making certain that my sisters and I understood the necessity of respecting your elders. And now I can only speak for myself now as an adult, but this (of many) things he spoke to us about has deeply been ingrained into my head and will forever be a teaching moment that I now use for my kids as well.

What does gratitude mean to you in today’s world? Well for starters when typing in “what does gratitude mean” into Google: the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and return kindness comes us as the definition.

And when I read that short but powerful and on point definition, the “show appreciation for and return kindness is like a firework in my mind. When we get all stuck on trying to make a living, get somewhere, be someone it can be very easy to forget about gratitude.

With gratitude comes an ease of living. With gratitude, you are constantly (forced) to keep life in perspective.

In order to have gratitude you have to be a bad ass, you have to train your brain to think that way. Because as the old saying goes “if you cannot be grateful for what you have, how will you be grateful for what is to come”?…

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that here in the U.S. (and maybe other countries as well) that many have slowly slipped away from seeing wisdom from our elders as important. Who needs an old person when you have Google? Who needs a story repeated ten times over when you can download an E-Book about it and read it in peace?

But peace comes from patience and patience is developed through being more mindful…

Several years ago I took a class (and I wish I could remember with who) and I came across a few notes on gratitude, they were as follows:

• You must be resilient in life to be happy and healthy.
• You must have humor
• Live life and not take it so seriously
• You must take a moment each day to really live!…
• We were encouraged to find a beautiful moment, a silly moment and a delicious moment in each day.

In re-reading all of this, the decision that perception is a moral test asking us if we take time each day to see beauty.

Gratitude keeps us connected to the real rhythms of life. The ones that make us thankful for living, for breathing, for being exactly who we are.

Are you grateful? Are you thankful for what you have? Where are you going? Where are you right now?

To cultivate gratitude one must shift their focus and create clarity in that process. What have you done to create that?