gratitude

Let Go

04/27/2018 by John Leave a Comment

I don’t know where to go from here and I think what I should do is to just stop being so concerned about it anyway. I’ve spent my life worrying too much about what’s next instead of appreciating what is. I’ve been constantly on the run from the slight discomfort of not feeling like I fit in enough, or that I don’t know enough to proceed, or because I think something is too difficult.

I’m tired of worrying about where to go from here. Chance and unexpected opportunity have been reliable guides thus far, I just never know when they are going to show up. There’s a thought, a feeling, I’m trying to express that seems to be struggling to bubble up through all the random insignificant thoughts that crowd my mind. Maybe it is this.

Let Go

Based on a journal entry from 3.10.16

Scenes From Gulf Shores, Alabama

04/06/2018 by John Leave a Comment

I walk down the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama and I see black boys and white boys playing football together.

Further down the shore, a man is taking pictures of a woman in a sari, the colors of her clothing as vibrant as the light of the setting sun.

The next morning as I stroll the sands I watch women wearing hijabs and capris playing with their children in the sand and I see interracial couples walking hand in hand.

These are things I never saw when I came here in my youth. Back then there was only a sea of people who looked like me. The news shows me scenes of darkness and hatred, but when I walk down the beach in the state where a governor once stood blocking a school room door from those he deemed different, I see something else: hope.

Accepting All of It

03/09/2018 by John Leave a Comment

I was running up Greybeard Mountain when I reached a state of total acceptance. I accepted the pain and fatigue in my legs along with the beauty of the snow and ice-covered trail. I accepted the thoughts that questioned why I was doing this and the lessons of humility and perseverance that running teaches me. I accepted the difficult conditions of the day: the steepness of the trail, the slippery surfaces that caused each footfall to slide a little bit backward, and the growing fatigue in my body as I neared the top of my second ascent of the mountain. To try and fight these things would be futile. Acceptance was the only answer.

With acceptance comes gratitude. I was filled with a sense of gratitude towards the mountain that had stood there for eons and would remain there long after I have left this world. It had no malice towards me, merely indifference. It was not there to be conquered, only experienced, accepted as it was.

Acceptance is not easy. Sometimes it takes moments of physical or emotional stress to force us to let down our guard and reach that state where we can fully experience all that is happening around and inside us and to just say yes to all of it.

We spend so much of our time battling the things we find difficult or unpleasant, trying with all our might to push them away, to pretend that they don’t exist. But those dark spaces remain in our periphery, tainting everything else we see until we come to the point of accepting them. We have trouble accepting even the good things in life. We wish that they were somehow better of that there were more of them instead of accepting and being grateful for what already is. In the end, we waste our time either pushing things away or pulling things towards us instead of merely accepting what is already right in front of us.

A funny thing happens when we allow ourselves to accept everything: we get a glimpse completeness. At last, after feeling so torn and tattered we can feel whole again. If we could just accept everything as it is, how different would we view our lives?

Based on a journal entry from 2.23.15