Tag: grateful

deserving

To feel like you deserve something can be a bit… funny. For me, anyway. For you; maybe it’s easy, but as someone who can’t help himself when it comes to the etymology and history, and who tries in ernest to be grateful for all things, and who fully acknowledges that all success is a gift from God (or Krishna, as it was explained to me, but that’s another tangent), it feels funny to look around my house that I will eventually own outright from the bank, chock full of wonderful musical instruments, vintage automobile parts, and among other things, the beautiful people I get to live out my days with and think “I deserve more.”

As I write this; we, as a family, are discussing an upcoming vacation. It won’t be a lengthy one but it will cost some money that we’ve saved for this precise application. After months of scrupulous saving, it’s suddenly time to ‘flip the switch’ and become decidedly un-precious about the fruits of our labour.

We are reserving hotel rooms, and buying plane tickets, and have already purchased concert tickets – the impetus of our journey. It’s taken a bit of time to change gears from the saving mentality to the spending mentality, and the word that brings us all into this place of feeling abundant is ‘deserving.’ As in “We deserve this.”

‘Deserving’ shares a root word with a superfluous dish that often follows dinner. An unnecessary indulgence, but an indulgence nonetheless. According to Krishna (and most other deities, I’m sure), we ‘deserve’ precisely fuck-all, and it is through the grace of God that we are permitted these indulgences. So it is not because we are ‘deserving’ of this vacation hat we are allowing ourselves to go, but by grace and grace alone.

It would do me – and probably you – well to remember these things in all that we do.

So I’ll try to seek joy in all things, because joy is like beauty in that it fades with time, especially if you are not choosing to find it where you are looking. We tip the people who are tasked with serving us in the hotels and restaurants we patronize, not only on this trip but in all our travels… this is how we tell people they are doing great work. But are we truly thankful for their efforts? Or do we feel we deserve them? As if we are ‘owed’ somehow…

As someone who is fairly tight-lipped in social settings, I’ll do my best to reach out and let people know they are appreciated.

It will mean more when my heart is in it.

forty-two

Today I celebrate another revolution.

I don’t know how much I have to say about my birthday, really, other than to say that I feel younger and more vital than I did 10 years ago.

I’m happy to still be a vegan athlete and rock & roller, to have wonderful people around me, and to make the best music of my life. I’m more grateful, present, and productive than I have been at any point in my life so far and I don’t think I’ve capped out yet.

Forty-two.

I think I’ll give myself the morning off from blogging and go for a run.

Peace.

step back

“I know for a fact that the blessing outweigh the curses, but I certainly have a propensity for focusing on what I don’t have, and even worse – what I don’t have anymore.”

I’ve spent a bit of time taking inventory of what I’ve got – not so much with material things, though that’s been happening a bit, too – but with the more intangible blessings and curses. I know for a fact that the blessing outweigh the curses, but I certainly have a propensity for focusing on what I don’t have, and even worse – what I don’t have anymore.

I imagine I’m not alone. I’ve heard it described as an evolutionary trait from previous iterations of survival, where we focus on the more dangerous and threatening things more than we do the gracious and joyous where, for example, we might overlook something as nice and inviting as a fruit tree while focusing on venomous snakes, because as wonderful as a fruit tree is, missing it won’t kill you the way a venomous snake might. Chemically, we would be on high alert, triggering what we now commonly call our ‘fight or flight response’ upon observing such a threat.

This is problematic now, as we’re constantly in a state of fight or flight due to the stresses of everyday life – work, money, rush hour traffic, etc. – causing us to contend with; among other things, stress and anxiety – which is literally the body’s response to being in a heightened state for far too long. This means that even those of us who wouldn’t necessarily refer to ourselves as anxious or stressed out are still in a heightened state most of the time, that stress just manifests differently.

The commonality for all of us; though, is a focus on the negative.

But to step back and take an objective look at what we have going on is not only difficult, and not only important, but also relieving. The truth is that everything is amazing. Alone, the fact that most of us walk around with the combined information of the known universe in our pockets is an incredible feat. Myself; I have a lovely home, and beautiful girlfriend and an amazingly smart kid, and a wonderful dog. I play in a great rock & roll band and I drive a cool car, I have a cool job. I get tattoos from incredible artists and have been to exotic locations… yet for some reason all that takes a back seat when I get a toothache, or when one of our bicycles gets stolen… or when I don’t like the number on the bathroom scale.

What are you grateful for? That’s a question we’re met with every morning, before we even have opportunity to scrape the crud from our eyes, and it truly sets the tone for the day. Sure, we get pulled off course from time to time, but in the grand scheme it’s of little consequence when we stop to really evaluate what we have.

It’s always easier said than done, but it’s an important, objective look at where you’re at – and as soon as you can do that with regularity, all the while understanding that you can’t control anything except your reaction… then you’ve really got something.