A Year of Gratitude – January 8, 2024

Mother Nature gave me my daily gratitude in abundance today. I woke up this morning, pulled back the curtains, and saw the entire landscape blanketed in snow. The sun was shining on the snow in a way that made it glint and gleam in every direction.

I wasn’t feeling particularly grateful in spite of the beauty of it. My mind started to focus on the cold, on the need to embark on another round of snow clearing, on the chore of it.

Somehow, my attention wandered just enough to come back to the beauty of it, the splendor of the millions of tiny snowflakes that fell yesterday all piling up to create so much beauty. It really is amazing if you stop to think about it.

And so I did stop to think about it. I thought about how we are presented with moments that require us to choose between gratitude and inconvenience. So much of life is that way.

Do I marvel at the snow and accept that it involves the chore of managing it and removing it? Or do I see it as one more chore, an obligation I didn’t choose and miss the entirety of its beauty because of it?

Gratitude is a choice just as happiness is. You can be grateful for small things and happy with very little. Just as you can be ungrateful for an abundance of good fortune and unhappy with seemingly everything.

If it’s a choice, and I believe that it is, I need to choose gratitude and happiness. I need to see the snow as glorious and beautiful and enjoy it while it lasts. I need to be happy that I was here to see it and that my body can handle the moving of it.

And so I will and that choice will make all the difference as I go about my day. I hope that your day presents you with beauty and the space to make the choice to see it, to enjoy it, and to find purpose in the managing of it.

This post is part of our A Year of Gratitude Series. You can find the introduction, inspiration, and entire year’s gratitude’s posts here.