Wizard of Oz - Scarecrow Costume includes: Headpiece, shirt, pants & belt cord.Making a list of gratitudes is an exercise that holds renewed power each time it is repeated. One can never be too conscious of everything there is for which to be grateful. So make a gratitude list today... and make another one next month, or maybe next week, or maybe tomorrow. Don't take ANYTHING for granted... start the list with "being alive," and "being ME." List EVERYTHING there is to be grateful for... NO Assumptions! NO Expectations!
While you're working on your list, let me share mine: I'm grateful to be alive and ME in this instant. I'm grateful for everything that has ever occurred to bring me to this moment of being exactly who I am today. I'm grateful to my distant ancestors who survived eons of sameness punctuated by moments of terror... who fought saber tooth tigers and barely survived each winter in order to pass down the genes that make me who I am today. I am grateful to my father's father who sailed from China alone as a young boy in the hold of a sailing ship, bringing my genes from desperate hunger to the opportunity of America. I am grateful to my father's mother and her ancestors who brought their part of my biological inheritance from Holland to "New Amsterdam." I am grateful to my mother's parents who brought their share of my genes from an unhappy Germany to a new beginning in Connecticut. I am grateful to my parents for choosing to bring me into the world - 17 years after my only sibling, and at an age when most couples of their generation had completed their childbearing. Just genetically, my chances of being ME are infinitesimally small.
I am grateful for everything my parents did and didn't do. I am grateful for the unconditional love I received from each of them. I am grateful for the lessons of my father's heavy drinking, and my mother's fear of strangers. I am grateful both for the joy of my mother's generous readings and other attentions to me, and for the pain my isolated early childhood later caused me. I am grateful even for the bullying and other painful experiences of my youth, as each one made me the person I am today. I am grateful for every success and every failure I have ever had... every new love and every divorce... every promotion and every firing... every smile and every tear.
There is simply nothing NOT to be grateful for.
Jonathan Huie is an author of self-awareness books and free inspirational email publications. Visit http://www.sail7.com to sign up for daily and weekly free email publications, and browse the library for past issues of the emailings and free articles on happiness, joyful living, forgiveness, gratitude, celebration and similar topics. Jonathan's current book project is SAIL: Simply An Inspired Life (co-authored with Mary Anne Radmacher - author of Live Boldly and Lean Forward Into Your Life), to be published by Conari Press in late 2009.
