Gratitude

I think I'm a very grateful person. Kind of weirdly aware of how good I have it. I don't know why, I'm usually pretty aware at how awesome a particular moment. Or, when a paritucular moment is bad, one of my first reactions is always to think of how it could be worse. This has the effect of making me grateful for the not-so-great moment. I've always been like this - even as a kid. In high school, I applied early decision to a college and didn't get in. Friends said they were sorry and that I should have gotten in. My natural response was, "yeah but if I had to choose between not getting into a college and someone in my family being sick, I'd happily choose to not get into the college." It's almost like my brain imagines worse case scenarios, becomes aware that the current situation is better than that, and, thereby, gains perspective and becomes grateful for it. (Obviously this doesn't mean I'm never in a bad mood or never down...)

Let me share some ways I have been grateful lately:

Yesterday I was tutoring my 4 year old. He did something that made me crack up. I thought, "I am being paid to laugh right now."

Yesterday I was driving from the tutoring center to a student's house (who does in-house tutoring as opposed to coming to the center). I was stuck in traffic. I thought, "I am being paid to be in a traffic jam right now." I was also talking to my dad on the phone, and I thought, "I'm being paid to have a conversation with my dad."

When I'm at the fro yo store and I take a sample of fro yo, I think "I'm getting paid to eat frozen yogurt right now."

(Maybe it's because I found teaching so incredibly hard and I seriously lived in a chronic state of elevated stress, that I'm just super aware of getting paid for mundane, easy things).

Yesterday I was freezing when I woke up. I just wanted to take a warm shower. As I got in the shower, my first thought was, "I'm so lucky I have hot water." (I never don't have hot water, so I don't know why I'm so grateful for hot water....)

I caught some sort of cold at Wrockstock/the airplane. My throat hurts every time I swallow. Every time I cough, I cough up snot (too much info? haha). My head feels totally clogged. I woke up this morning and felt worse than yesterday. My first thought was, "This is so much better than having cancer. I'd take this any day."

I'm so grateful for the morning I'm having today. Today is a rest day from exercise for me, so I'm not running. I don't have to be anywhere until the afternoon. So I sat at my kitchen table, drank 3 mugs of coffee, watched TV on hulu.com, and read articles from the NY times and I thought, "If I had kids, I couldn't be doing this. It's so nice to have a calm morning when I don't feel so hot right now. If I had kids, even if I had a cold, I'd have to be entertaining them, supervising them, listening to them, feeding them. Some day, it is likely that I will have kids (just statistically speaking), and I won't have moments like these to myself anymore. I am so grateful for this moment."

When I run, I am always so grateful to have a working body. So grateful it gives me chills some times.... When I get tired as I'm running, one of my first thoughts is, "How lucky I am to be tired from running. If I was never tired from running, it would mean I couldn't run. I'm so thankful that I get to experience physical exhaustion. It's a sign of a working body." (Sometimes I'm just purely energetic when I run and not tired at all. On those days i think, "Thank you for letting me be one of those people who loves exercise and doesn't dread it. I'm so grateful that running is enjoyable to me."

I have to do a lot of laundry today. I hate laundry. One of my first thoughts was, "I'm so glad I have clothes to wash and I have a washer/dryer in my apartment. If I had to go to the laundromat, that would be so much worse and I'd be jumping for joy at the opportunity to do laundry in my own apartment." And I was grateful.

Jane says that I have a naturally happy disposition. I get sad. I get lethargic. I get down. I lose exuberance. But, generally, she's right. Overall, I do have a naturally energetic and happy dispostiion. I wonder if awareness of good and awareness that things good be worse is part of the reason I generally am happy? (Well, it contributes any way...)

Below is a picture of breakfast. I'm liking this photo thing. See, this is me fulfilling Tracy's macronutrient requirement AND getting to eat produce. I used to eat such boring meals because vegetables and fruits just added calories; that's how I thought. Now that I am not thinking of them like that, I feel free to eat foods I want to eat AND eat the macronutrients that I should eat. This looks like a very normal breakfast, no? It's 1 egg sauteed with mushrooms, red and orange pepper, and spinach on top of half a whole wheat english muffin. Then there is honey-flavored non-fat greek yogurt topped with a small handful of blueberries and raspberries.