The Stories We Tell Ourselves

The moon over the sunrise. A gift!

 In 2020, I learned that the world is not as safe as I may have thought. The virus, the political arena, the arguments and disagreements, - all added up to make me anxious. I was not alone.

2021 was not a whole lot better, with violence in our capital and the return of mass shootings. (Even shooters stayed home during the pandemic's first year.)

2022 - more of the same. My disillusionment was becoming a world view.

I dropped out of social media. I went to ground. And I told myself that the world was an unsettled, unsettling place.

Over and over again, I warned myself about real and imagined dangers. Over and over again, I congratulated myself on wisely hunkering down, laying low, disengaging.

Now, I am teaching a short "stories-we-tell" workshop to the children of my worship group. What a wake-up call! 

The world is complicated! The world is full of flawed and wonderful people, intriguing living things, beautiful rocks and trees, (awful traffic, annoying noises, too - let's be honest). 

Still, there is light - Light - every morning, even if the skies are gray. If I tell myself that the world is full of danger, I will treat everything and everyone as an enemy. Do I want to live in a world like that? Does that make me happy?  Um, no.

If my conversation is ONLY full of the way people irritate me, or close calls with disaster, or wrongs that I have suffered, YUCK! How can I bear getting up each day?

Somewhere in our suffering, we have to find birdsong, or cloud dances, or funny hats, or smiles.

The Attitude Doctors tell us to find three things to be grateful about each day. Make it easy on yourself. Be grateful for ONE thing! Just one. But be grateful for that one thing several times during the day. Maybe in a day or two, you will notice another thing to be grateful about.

Here are some suggestions:

Hot toast with your favorite spread. Just the smell is a gift.

Birds in puddles - they are seriously silly.

Roofs!

Warm socks.

Air.

The fact that things will change - hopefully for the better.

Can you walk? Be grateful. Can you see? Find interesting things to see.

You can change scary stories to ones of possibilities, tales of comfort, the history of growth.

Time to crawl out of the bunker. You can do it.

(Right now, I am grateful for radiators and tea kettles.)

 

 

A Grateful Post - #savethanksgiving

Today, I had errands to run. I don't often go out in my car alone to do stuff. I let the Hub drive or I squire my Mom around. During those rides we listen to the radio or talk about happenings.

Today, they both had other things to do so off I went. I found so many things that made me feel grateful.

1. The smiling postal worker who sent off my packages is deaf. She had a sign to tell you this and she used her hands effectively to indicate what I needed to do. She even had a lovely little sign printed up to thank me for using the USPS. Fastest, most pleasant trip to the Post Office ever.

2. The trees are holding onto their leaves a little longer this year. The colors are bright and filled me with happiness.

3. It looks like someone swept a paintbrush of white paint across the sky today - a streak of thinning white against a blue canvas.

4. I found lovely Thanksgiving items on drastic discount at the store.  Whoo- hoo!

5. I had to stop for a train on the way home. Watching the freight cars trundle by, reminded me of waiting with small boys in the car. We counted out loud as the cars passed. We named the cars. Thanks to Donald Crews book, "Freight Train" , we knew most of the train car types.

I remembered hearing the train whistle in the night and the creak and crash as the cars rounded a bend.

My heart rose to see that this mode of moving cargo is still being used. We find affection for all kinds of things - the railroad tracks we walk along, the flashing of the lights.

6. I had no reason to hurry. And that, alone, made me glad.

A little blast from the past - one of my lightbulb turkeys.