On Gratitude.

I've been contemplating gratitude often as of late.

I asked a friend for feedback on my Instagram gratitude posts and while I appreciated her honest and open feedback, I also saw how negative intent seeps in as loved ones attempt to understand our perspective often and we are not transparent to them about our state of being.  It's not about explaining so much as clarifying our approach.

When I was in martial arts training as a young teenager, we learned a lot about the Asian traditions of respect and gratitude.  I have always tried to remember those as a practice, especially in my adult life.  Even though I stopped practicing martial arts as a young adult, there are some aspects of the discipline that I subconsciously carried over into my adulthood.  These concepts came in handy for me after I was diagnosed with the the thyroid disorder that basically sent me to bed for six years in my twenties.  When we entered the karate school where I practiced, we were taught to bow as a sign of respect and gratitude every time we walked through the door.  We also did this every time we stepped on the mat to learn.  I quickly noticed that most people, even the adults, did this out of repetition and forgot the reason why we were asked to perform the ritual.  I didn't.  I was truly grateful for the lessons I learned in that environment.  It was something I was determined to never take for granted because even at a young age I recognized somehow that what I learned in that school carried over into every aspect of my life.  When we learned Kata, when we learned technique, when we sparred and did self defense clinics.  When we spent entire lessons learning about how to feel and shift energy around us.  Weapons training especially meant a lot to me because I always had a challenge with weapons.  There were so many mental obstacles to fight through when I picked up any weapon to use.  All of these lessons taught me something about myself and I became much more self aware of how I interacted with the world around me because of those moments on the mat.

Respect and gratitude have to be fostered and practiced in order for us to learn lessons about ourselves.  In the moments when I focus on these concepts I recognize that I open myself to positive energy and positive people are attracted to me.  When I become negative and complain, when I forget self respect and respect for others, I push good influences out of my life.  I do not wish to preach about how anyone else should live their lives, but one thing I do know is that if I forget the practice, I begin to have a negative impact on my environment.  There is one thing that I am determined to not be:  someone who only has negative purpose.  I do not wish to be a bully.  I do not wish to be abusive.  I do not wish to look back at my life and notice a pattern of hurt and devastation in the trail of failed relationships that I leave behind me. I also do not want to be abusive to myself. All of these things begin to happen when I fail to recognize that empathy is not natural to us.

In my last blog, I mentioned that we only really see our own perspectives.  We are selfish creatures by nature because we only have access to our own consciousness. Think about how many times you've felt misunderstood by someone you love deeply.  Think of the rejection and hurt that creates because you felt like that person should've understood you better in a moment.  Then think about how that hurt can spiral between two people over days, weeks or months at a time because you are each fighting for your perspective to be considered and even when you acknowledge that another perspective exists; the hurt you feel is still an open wound that fails to mend because you don't feel heard.  What if I just closed my eyes in those times and meditated on the hurt, acknowledged it's presence and let the anger go?  What if I let rage melt into gratitude for a lesson willing to be learned, or for the opportunity to experience such intimacy with someone that such deep hurt was possible?  What would happen in those moments?  Would I fight anymore at all?

I truly feel like gratitude is the key to accomplishing positivity and creating a better energy around myself.  Instead of looking at someone and seeing their opportunities and then bitching out loud about them to someone else, or saying spiteful things to those people themselves in those moments which I know will create pain for them, maybe I should shut my mouth.  Direct feedback to someone about an opportunity you observe is very different than judgement.  Judgement is limitation and limitation scars.  It is abusive. One hundred percent abusive.  If we are criticizing more than we are offering uplifting words, we are abusive.  It is also a direct reflection on where our minds are at.  If I only see negative aspects of people and point them out, I am saying that I am insecure. I am saying that I feel horrible about myself and I don't want to put the work into fixing the real issue, so I'm going to take it out on you.  It becomes a tornado of energy that eats itself as the proverbial snake swallowing it's own tail.  We get stuck in those places and can't get out until something so bad happens that the tail of the snake is cut off and then we are a bloody mess on the floor.

I would like to avoid this as often as possible.  So I choose to practice gratitude consciously.  When I forget and shove it into the sub conscious and forget to put work into it, just as everything else of value in my life requires attention and work, problems arise.

I have a lot to be grateful for through grief and through trauma.  I have a beautiful life.  I have an awesome home that never fails to fill me with joy because I am mostly a homebody.   I have a lot of natural curiosity, intelligence and aptitude for creativity in many ways.  I am brave.  I am adventurous.  My bills are paid and I'm not a drag on anyone financially. I try to take care of my family and my friends when they need support.  This most of all has the deepest impact on me.  I have fucking amazing people who are willing to come sit at my table and enjoy time with me.  That gift is irreplaceable and when I meditate on that alone, I find it easier to displace the negative things that people choose to say about me and how they judge me because they are trapped in their own demons.  My roommates keep pointing it out to me in the past few months.  You have good friends.  You have great people.  Like... stable, creative, smart people who simply enjoy sharing a kinetic vibe with you.  Last night it came up again:  Crystal, you have a lot of really cool friends. People who aren't shady or destructive.  People who don't come and talk shit about other people all the time or create drama, or use you because they have failed themselves.  They just want to talk about interesting things that are happening in the world or tell stories of their day, or ask questions of things they are going through so that they understand their environment more holistically.  These are rad people who I am lucky to even know, much less have say to me that they want to spend the little bit of free time they have with me when they can.  So I become the company I keep, like the proverbial circle of Buddhist heaven where the chopsticks are too long so they sit together and feed each other in the round; rather than the proverbial circle of Buddhist hell where they attempt over and over again to feed themselves with chopsticks that are too long and in doing so, all sit in a circle and starve together, alone.

I have to be grateful for this.  I have no choice.  When I am criticized for being crazy, or someone tells me I have a twisted little mind; what if I zoom out and think of the forty other people who say nothing but kind things to me no matter how long it's been since we last spent time together?  When trauma threatens to break me and I can't eat or sleep and there are several people who will answer the phone at three a.m. to tell me that I can't let the lies seep in and I am more than the gaslighting that tries to convince me I am not a good person or not worth anything.  When I push people who I think are too good for me away because I am convinced I'm going to ruin their lives and they send me a text to say that they miss me and there's nothing I could do or have ever done to hurt them in the twenty plus years I've known them, besides not spend enough time with them.  When I ask someone if people just feel sorry for me because I am genuinely nuts and they burst out laughing because the concept is so absurd to them.  Or when my roommates who have both lived with me for over two years, look at me and say that I've offered them a beautiful, safe place to live. And it is warm with love even when we fail each other in our own ways and all know each other in our ugliest moments, there is still peace.  My list is endless.  Somehow.

I get this feedback when I open my eyes in the morning and say I am grateful for what the day brings, no matter what it is.  Life is hard.  Why would I make it harder by tearing myself or other people down?  So right now? My challenge is to practice gratitude harder.  To meditate on beauty instead of destruction so that I can handle absolutely anything the universe throws at me.  Doesn't this create the ebb and flow of balance?  What if we lived in a world where when someone says something critical to us, we stop, break the cycle and do something kind for someone else instead of absorbing the hurt and paying that forward?  The concept of The Buddha is to bow lower in the face of adversity.

So I will not stop saying I am grateful.  You can call me names if you want, and they sting in the moment for sure, but in the long run, I can't care.  This approach brings reward and blessings to my life.  And my legacy to the universe is all I can care about, I can't carry your load too.  I can only be responsible for my own output and taking the time to care for myself so I can care for the people I love and add value to my community.  At the end of the day, I want to offer the people I love safety, consistency and I want to offer myself... respect.  I want to look in the mirror at the end of every day and respect myself, so if I must, I will gladly take a little bit of crazy alongside of that.  If those are my goals, the critical voices must be rejected, because as I work hard to maintain balance, remember, the universe has other challenges to test me with.  In exercising conscious gratitude for challenges, I only snowball more strength for the next challenge.

"See all of my kindness is taken for weakness..."
Paul McCartney/ Kanye West