Attitude of Gratitude

Just the other day, I was going down "the list" -- you know, the list of grievances, wrongdoings and conspiracies against me. We all know life is not perfect but yet for me it seemed to be so imperfect all at once. It would be one thing if I had only one, lone fire to extinguish. But no -- I had like 6 or 7 fairly significant problems I was juggling simultaneously which definitely made for an uncomfortable bottleneck. From work to family to society in general, I was not having a good day.

Then, I do not know whether we have "AI" to thank or not, but magically the next morning, my phone automatically and "randomly" suggested a photograph from my archives for me to admire from the past. Which photo was it? Why, it was only the photograph of my wife and I's 27th wedding anniversary, whereby we are seated close to one another, smiling quite broadly.

Then it hit me.

Of course we were excited to reach the milestone of 27 blissful years together. But more importantly, the key context for this picture was when it was taken -- which was only less than a month after I underwent triple-bypass surgery. Those were smiles of gratitude that by the grace of God, we were able to continue living life together.

My eyes immediately started to moisten.

As I was in a public place, I had to stabilize myself immediately. But once I had my emotions back under control, I stopped adding to "the list." Yes, life can happen and can happen in spurts and downpours no matter what you do. It is what it is. But what I can control is my focus upon the big picture and keep the main thing the main thing. Once I recall that things could have turned out vastly different for me, the humility kicks in once again and all my problems take on their rightful size instead of becoming more magnified and distorted inside my head.

That picture reminded me of that time when we had to face the facts about heart disease, face our fears about the surgery and face death in tangible ways that we never had to before. The fact that we are still here is what's most important, not my personal perception of conspiracies against me. If anything, the universe conspired for me to still be alive on planet Earth for which I am grateful. May the attitude of gratitude see us through.