Grateful.

That’s the word of the day.

Sometimes it’s the one thing we don’t have much time for, that chance to feel grateful. Or it’s a passing emotion we barely acknowledge. But as trite or common or naïve as it may sound, there are so many things that deserve our gratitude. Our children being healthy instead of ill. Having a job we love that occasionally loves us back. Having a job at all in times like these. Great friends who keep us sane, or give us sanctuary, or who make us laugh like sinners, or forgive our sins on a daily basis. Friends like my stockbroker who’s getting his company to donate all – all – of their charitable donations this year to fight breast cancer. Answered prayers. Or ones that may yet be answered. Second chances and second chapters, because our lives are full of them, regardless of what Fitzgerald wrote. Today I kept internally complaining about the stupidest things – if it’s not the vacuuming or the sweeping or the laundry or the dog hair it’s the garden or the weeding or the watering or the cat food. It’s the writing job I don’t want to do but that screams to be done. The invoicing the clients the conference calls the essentials and the demanding and the needy and they never go away. But if they did, then what? Then there’d be complaining about that, too. I walk out and see the garden growing like literal and delicious (truly edible) weeds and think, we did that, we cultivated that, it’s worth everything and more. But it doesn't take a garden. It takes observation. It takes knowing things could be much worse. Much harder. Much less. We must find – I must find, anyway – the space to be consciously grateful. And some sort of constant way to be thankful more often than not.