Stop Being Grateful For Everything

You'll be grateful you did!

Photo by Nubelson Fernandes on Unsplash

It had been a few weeks since I last saw George.

"You look buggered!"

I laughed.

He doubled down, describing my state in terms too graphic to repeat.

Now I was laughing so hard I was gasping and crying.

"You've got to go!"

"What's wrong?"

"I'm going to crap myself!"

So I did, and felt amazing.

Let me explain...

I used to write a gratitude list every morning.

I'm grateful for my life

I'm grateful for my job

I'm grateful for my family

...

You know the drill.

Eventually I wasn't even thinking about what I was writing, let alone feeling gratitude.

It got so tedious that I even wrote a keyboard shortcut for "I'm grateful for " — talk about missing the point!

You see, back in 2000, I had been admitted into hospital as an emergency with abdominal pain so severe that morphine did nothing.

At first they thought it was a kidney stone, but after a day of scans and me being unable to keep even water down, a doctor came to my bed and said "We need to operate. Right now."

The team then proceeded to defile me in almost every medical way I had hoped never to endure. Nasogastric tube? Check. Catheter? Check. They both lived up to the hype. Not recommended.

You see, I had a bowel obstruction and I was about to die.

After the surgery, I woke with a line in my neck, a surgical drain and an epidural as well as the nasogastric tube and the catheter. They’d cut me from the top of my abdomen to the top of my groin area, with a small deviation to avoid going through my belly button.

I was in indescribable agony, but slowly, I began to recover from the laparotomy.

Ten days had passed, but a stool had not, and this was a critical point in my recovery. Apparently when your intestines are handled, the peristalsis that normally keeps things moving along nicely, stops, and it takes a while for it to recover. It hadn't. I needed to pass a stool to prove that it had.

Enter George.

Exit stool. In a bedpan of course. While I was not yet mobile, I could manage that.

After he left, I cried tears of gratitude for functioning bowels. For several minutes. I realised just how much I had been taking for granted. I've never forgotten the way I felt that day.

So now, to get the benefit of gratitude, I have to catch myself enjoying something, and imagining my life without it, and then meditating on that for a few minutes.

Pretty soon I remember the way I felt when George made me crap myself with laughter and I'd feel the tears welling up.

Now I can make myself feel that way about a cup of coffee, and yes, there have been times when I've not been able to afford Monmouth Coffee, not that long ago, when I was making do with Lidl, and yet, I was immensely grateful for that too.

Don’t write in a gratitude journal unless you can make yourself feel it.

And while I don't cry with gratitude every day, I try to make my practice count, even if it's just for the gift of seeing another glorious day.