There was a day when the eyes I see this world with were not as they are now. They were expectant that the world around me would give me what I wanted. What I deserved. They were looking, darting back and forth, for something fulfilling, gratifying, pleasing. Looking for inherent and blatant greatness in things that my heart had taken no time to appreciate.
They were expecting thankfulness for a world I was not thankful for.
Rewind a year from this month, and I was at Kanakuk Kamps working in the office as an Office Girl (the real OG’s, anyone?). I walked into Kamp feeling ready for the Lord to affirm how well I was doing. How successfully I was loving people around me, how humbly I was living life, and how thankfully I entered every circumstance given to me.
All I can do, as I see that experience in retrospect, is laugh at my self and my naivety. During my six weeks at Kamp, I learned, in a fast paced, fully immersed manner, what it really looked like to be thankful beyond expression for the great and the insignificant of every day. I learned a seemingly tiny thing about perspective that changed seemingly everything about my world.
I learned how to fall on my knees daily with gratitude, and in turn get to live with child-like excitement for the minute-by-minute grind of every day.
Learning this was by no means perfect and by no means easy. And to have further honesty about it, I am by no means killing it in the thankfulness department every day. I have spent countless days, even still, bemoaning the workload ahead, the group member who pushes my buttons, or the weather that doesn’t float my boat. I am still an imperfect person living an imperfect life.
The exciting simplicity of this thankfulness is that I now get to spend more minutes than I used to with this refreshing attitude, and I can work towards even more of that perspective each day. Each time that I get just one more day with my eyes open to all there is to be thankful for, I feel giddy for another day like that. The joy that permeates through the most mundane parts of a typical day cannot be beat.
We have this opportunity at our fingertips to grin ear to ear because we saw an old classmate, got a perfectly warmed latte, had a productive hour of work, or saw a great TV show at the gym. To be excited about the little things again, instead of waiting for the absolutely extraordinary moments of life to finally crack a smile.
This is not to say that the extraordinary should not be awaited with eager expectation. Those big, standout moments are huge, and should be reveled in as such. However, it would be a disservice to ourselves to live life on autopilot, coasting with no excitement for each day until that shining moment arrives (and quickly passes by, I should mention).
In practice, this change in perspective started to take hold when I began writing in a thankfulness journal. Ugh, those words sound lame and like a homework assignment, but trust me, this is not that at all. Mine is just this numbered list, throughout the pages of a free notebook I had handy, of things big and small that I feel thankful for on any given day. One day might include friends laughing until cries and snorts are shared, peanut butter on a spoon, warm dry grass in the sunshine on Kafadar Commons, and a professor smiling and saying ‘see you Wednesday’ as you walk out the door. They aren’t necessarily things that never happen. This list in particular has happened on many different days in my life. It isn’t about how unique the experiences are; it is about recognizing those things as things to be grateful for.
The most refreshing part of doing this, at least for me, is that this list just gets stuck in my head such that now, when I get that peanut butter or that sunshine, I smile with immediate gratitude because I recognize those things as blessings. Simply writing them down and taking that time to being thankful in such a tangible manner makes for such real perspective change, since it wasn’t just a passing thought.
In my life, this comes easiest when I feel overwhelmingly stressed and need to take a step away. Grab the journal, run outside to a bench real quick, and take five minutes to jot down a few things throughout the day that are deserving of some gratitude.
I almost want to describe the moments after doing this as magical, because the attitude shift is immediate and smiling often ensues. Of course, some see magical moments as unrealistic and unattainable, and this is very far from that. This is, like, the most attainable.
If you sit in front of a computer screen wishing for a little more to be thankful for, I encourage you to try this out. Even just jotting down a few things on the Notebook App is a great place to start. The drudgery that seems to characterize some of our day-to-day grinds does not need to be lacking in happiness, joy, and excitement. Sometimes, all that needs to be thrown into the mix is a little thankfulness. Suddenly the world we see around us may look very different, but in the best of ways.
Cheers, y'all, to summer time, summer sun, and a new attitude of thankfulness.
