So a few nights ago, Grandmother came to me in a dream—I mean, I don't believe it was her ghost come to visit, or that she communicates with me from the afterlife via dreams, but rather that my unconscious brain needed to tell me something and knew I would listen if it came from Grandmother—anyway, unlike most of my dreams of Grandmother, I woke up from this one feeling hopeful instead of sad. In the dream she reminded me that gratitude is the antidote to resentment, and that all I had to do to be happier was to focus on those things in my life for which I am grateful, instead of those things in my life that I resent. It came as a revolutionary solution, though it's something I've known for years and used to practice in my everyday thinking.
I've been practicing this since, though it's not as easy as it used to be. I don't think it's because I have so markedly fewer things to be grateful for, though certainly I've lost a lot of things I used to count when I'd count my blessings; but my brain chemistry has devolved to a point where it's hard to be grateful. Like, when I woke up from that dream I just felt grateful without having to enumerate the things, but today I'm hunting through my consciousness to find some scrap of gratitude. I have just as many things to be grateful for as I had two days ago, with the exception of however many micrograms of serotonin required for the emotion.
Either way, I'm going to keep looking for good things instead of staring at the bad things, and hope that will have some effect on my day-to-day feelings. And hope that I can parlay that little bit of a lift into motivation to do other things I know will make me feel better, like getting some exercise and bathing before I get stinky and itchy. I don't know. We'll see.
Until then, I hope your day is full of things to be grateful for, and full of gratitude for those things.
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