Thoughtfully Present

Gratitude is a reflection.

Dearest whoever you are,

Welcome to my gratitude journal.

You’d think, as you read this line, that I am a grateful person experiencing a pleasant day full of wholesome habits. Wholesome, that word messes with me every time because it is the sound of aspirational perfection that has no place in brokenness. Being whole does not it mean no longer being sick or in need of healing? In a broken world, with haunted and charred memories, how does one ever be whole?

I digress, today of all days, I am not particularly having a bad day, nor is it a good day. It is one of those days that blend into the other, a continuation of monotony that a working week drags every Monday. In fact, just before I decided to write this, I was going through a fit of frustration from my printer acting up again when I badly needed to print out a document!

I feel out of control with this mundane task that I find myself spiralling, ready to slap the printer into submission or functionality, whichever would achieve the results needed. I feel like I am in the middle of an organised chaos, it may seem to an observer like I have my shit together, when in fact I am silently losing it.

It is in the midst of this that my partner walks in and presents me with a wrapped gift, by the shape of it and the color of the wrapper, I know it is a book from our local bookstore, there is no mystery there but the intrigue is that I do not know what kind of book it’d be, I delay all the mental screaming to enjoy this monetary serendipitous distraction, by the way, serendipity is one of my favorite words. I do not know how this habit of his started, but he seems to buy me a book on days I do not even realise that I needed something to look forward to.

What makes it even more special is that he never really knows once he lifts of the book from the shelf whether I have read it or not, whether I’d like the author or not, trust me, I think this is an extreme sport for him as well considering he had tried to surprise me with a book in the past and I literally told him “oh, I have finished the series, I am waiting for the latest one to be released”.

I open this book, and now for the third time in a row, it is one from a new author and a new release I haven’t got around to reading yet. Mind you, I still have books I haven’t opened because I keep reading a cluster at a time. I wonder how he chose this book out of the several choices that he must have been presented with at the store.

Now, my mind is calm in this distraction, and I am overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude to be in a place where there is another who watches over my well-being with vested interest. I am grateful for my new kind of problems, being pissed that I have to divide my attention, that I never seem to run out of to-dos, that there is something new I can desire, that my friends are constant, that I remember to smile, or sometimes I am the reason for someone else’s smile.

I am grateful for sanity, for painful memories that make the good times even more marinated in profound depth. I am grateful for nostalgia. I recently remembered a smell from my childhood that I do not particularly remember what it means, but know vividly that it is an aroma from the past. I am grateful for random moments, chance meetings, strangers that beautify my moments, many acts of kindness, the thoughtfulness of the love I experience, and the opportunity for redamancy.

I am grateful for all the Nos that led me to a YES. Grateful for silent nights of tearstained pillows, beautiful mornings with a smile, the ability to smell, opportunity for silence, the ability to own my actions, a deep sense of contentment in my experiences, wisdom to grow, grateful for adaptability and vulnerability, grateful for pocket-sized affections yet depths of the ocean. I am grateful I am.

I am grateful for all the holidays I have experienced, all my christmas memories and all the ones yet coming, I am grateful for the sound of rain, petrichor, cozy weather, a hug and a cuddle, I am grateful for the ability to try again, to trust again even though with baby steps, to hurt and to heal, to scar and to bleed, to live again and again in every sense of rebirth. I am grateful for audacity, the one I possess and the ones I witness that cause me to be audacious. I am grateful for the privilege to believe that there is something greater than me, to be part of many chapters in different people’s lives and the ones who share mine.

To be thoughtfully present is to inhale the reminder that now is all we have and to exhale, letting go of all the things that never quite seem to come together. Let this be a beginning for your thoughts on gratitude.

Yours Truly,

Dcconoisseur.