Sunday, March 6, 2016

Food for thought



Gratefulnes

Today I am grateful. I am grateful for having encountered the TED-talk of brother David Steindle-Rast. It will change my life, I'm sure of that.
After watching the talk (https://www.ted.com/playlists/233/words_to_live_by) I realised that his words are true. The times in my live where I was the most happy, were also the times where I was the most grateful. And probably I was happy because I was grateful.
Usually I am quite grateful, and to be honest also quite happy, but it is not a conscience state of gratefulness. It is just there.  Probably, that's also something to be grateful about, but it gets shoved aside real easy when I get annoyed about something.

I can hugely appreciate small things, like this morning. It had rained and even snowed a lot the past couple of days, so everything was extremely wet. But this morning the sun got out and heated up all this moist, to become a kind of steam coming of the wooden poles in our garden, magical! Seeing something so beautiful makes me very happy.

But then, the everyday life gets in the way of this gratefulness. I get annoyed by my husbands 'laziness', get annoyed by my children screeming or interrupting whatever it is I want to do at that moment, and boom, there goes my happiness...

So, after watching brother David today, I realise that there are two important things I need to do to ignite my life into a more conscious happy life.
First, I am going to challenge myself to stop whenever I get annoyed by something. Look.  And then find something I am grateful for at that very moment. Then I will be ready for doing something, and probably this will not only make my life happier, but also that of the people who surround me. Creating a ripple.

The second thing I want to do, is give gratitude to my children. Somewhere in the process of losing our religion we also lost the time where we collectively pray and say our thanks. My grandfather was a reverend, but somewhere after my 7th birthday my mother stopped going to church. Life was busy, lot's of other things to do, not quite a conscious choice, but we somehow just stopped going after a period of infrequent church visits. However, we kept our tradition of saying grace before our meals. 

I stopped that tradition when I went to university. It just didn't make sense at the time, the people I lived with did't say grace and I was a long way from being religious. 
But even though we as a family are not religious at this moment, we can still make saying grace to each other a daily routine and a new tradition for our family. It will be something I can give to our children, so hopefully they will grow up to be grateful and happy people.
With these thoughts, I am grateful to fall asleep in a bed freshly made up by my 'lazy' husband. Lucky me!

Tell me, what is it that you are grateful for? Let's share our stories!