One single gift acknowledged in gratefulness
has the power to dissolve the ties of our alienation. --Brother David
Steindl-Rast
Three Steps to Living A Life of Gratefulness
--by Brother
David Steindl-Rast, syndicated from gratefulness.org,
Jul 19, 2016
An
act of gratitude is a living whole. To superimpose on its organic flow a mental
grid like a series of “steps” will always be somewhat arbitrary. And yet, for
the sake of practice, such a delineation can be helpful.
Syndicated
with permission from Gratefulness.org A worldwide network
dedicated to gratefulness as the core inspiration for personal change,
international cooperation, and sustainable activism in areas of universal
concern.
In
any process, we can distinguish a beginning, a middle, and an end. We may use
this basic three-step grid for the practice of gratitude: What happens at the
start, in the middle, and at the end, when we experience gratitude? What fails
to happen when we are not grateful?
Before
going to bed, I glance back over the day and ask myself: Did I stop and allow
myself to be surprised? Or, did I trudge on in a daze?
To
be awake, aware, and alert are the beginning, middle, and end of gratitude. This
gives us the clue to what the three basic steps of practicing gratitude must
be.
Step One: Wake Up
To
begin with, we never start to be grateful unless we wake up. Wake up to what? To
surprise. As long as nothing surprises us, we walk through life in a daze. We
need to practice waking up to surprise. I suggest using this simple question as
a kind of alarm clock: “Isn’t this surprising?” “Yes, indeed!” will be the
correct answer, no matter when and where and under what circumstances you ask
this question. After all, isn’t it surprising that there is anything at all,
rather than nothing? Ask yourself at least twice a day, “Isn’t this surprising?”
and you will soon be more awake to the surprising world in which we live.
Surprise
may provide a jolt, enough to wake us up and to stop taking everything for
granted. But we may not at all like that surprise. “How can I be grateful for
something like this?” we may howl in the midst of a sudden calamity. And why?
Because we are not aware of the real gift in this given situation:
opportunity.
Step Two: Be Aware of Opportunities
There
is a simple question that helps me to practice the second step of gratitude:
“What’s my opportunity here?” You will find that most of the time, the
opportunity that a given moment offers you is an opportunity to enjoy–to enjoy
sounds, smells, tastes, texture, colors, and, with still deeper joy,
friendliness, kindness, patience, faithfulness, honesty, and all those gifts
that soften the soil of our heart like warm spring rain. The more we practice
awareness of the countless opportunities to simply enjoy, the easier it becomes
to recognize difficult or painful experiences as opportunities, as gifts.
But
while awareness of opportunities inherent in life events and circumstances is
the core of gratefulness, awareness alone is not enough. What good is it to be
aware of an opportunity, unless we avail ourselves of it? How grateful we are
shows itself by the alertness with which we respond to the opportunity.
Step Three: Respond Alertly
Once
we are in practice for being awake to surprise and being aware of the
opportunity at hand, we will spontaneously be alert in our response, especially
when we are offered an opportunity to enjoy something. When a sudden rain shower
is no longer just an inconvenience but a surprise gift, you will spontaneously
rise to the opportunity for enjoyment. You will enjoy it as much as you did in
your kindergarten days, even if you are no longer trying to catch raindrops in
your wide-open mouth. Only when the opportunity demands more from you than
spontaneous enjoyment will you have to give yourself a bit of an extra push as
part of Step Three.
Stop, look, go.
The
Review Process It helps me to review my own practice of gratefulness by applying
to these three basic steps the rule I learned as a boy for crossing an
intersection: “Stop, look, go.” Before going to bed, I glance back over the day
and ask myself: Did I stop and allow myself to be surprised? Or did I trudge on
in a daze? Was I too busy to wake up to surprise? And once I stopped, did I look
for the opportunity of that moment? Or did I allow the circumstances to distract
me from the gift within the gift? (This tends to happen when the gift’s
wrappings are not attractive.) And finally, was I alert enough to go after it,
to avail myself fully of the opportunity offered to me?
There
are times, I must admit, when stopping at night to review my day seems to be the
first stop on an express train. Then I look back and realize with regret how
much I missed. Not only was I less grateful on those non-stop days, I was less
alive, somehow numb. Other days may be just as busy, but I do remember to stop;
on those days, I even accomplish more because stopping breaks up the routine.
But unless I also look, the stopping alone will not make my day a truly happy
one; what difference does it make that I am not on an express train but on a
local if I’m not aware of the scenery outside the windows? On some days, I even
find in my nightly review that I stopped and I looked, but not with alertness.
Just yesterday, I found a huge moth on the sidewalk; I did stop long enough to
put it in a safe spot on the lawn, just a foot away, but I didn’t crouch down to
spend time with this marvelous creature. Only faintly did I remember, at night,
those iridescent eyes on the grayish brown wings. My day was diminished by this
failure to stay long enough with this surprise gift to deeply look at it and to
savor its beauty gratefully.
My
simple recipe for a joyful day is this: Stop and wake up; look and be aware of
what you see; then go on with all the alertness you can muster for the
opportunity the moment offers. Looking back in the evening, on a day on which I
made these three steps over and over, is like looking at an apple orchard heavy
with fruit.
This
recipe for grateful living sounds simple–because it is. But simple does not mean
easy. Some of the simplest things are difficult because we have lost our
childlike simplicity and have not yet found our mature one. Growth in gratitude
is growth in maturity. Growth, of course, is an organic process. And so we come
back to what I said at the beginning: To superimpose on the organic flow of
gratitude a mental grid like a series of “steps” will remain arbitrary. When I
am grateful, I am neither rushing nor slouching through my day–I’m dancing. What
is true in dance class is true here too: Only when you forget to think of your
steps, do you truly dance.
This
essay first appeared on Beliefnet, Summer 2001.
Be The Change: Practice the three steps of
gratitude today. For more inspiration watch this short video on "A Good
Day".
