Gratefulness and the Power of Contentment
Generally speaking, any kind of awareness practice serves to remind us that we can choose to point the spotlight of our attention on that which we value and want to tend. The practice of living gratefully invites us to shine light on all that is already available and abundant in our lives — from the tiniest things of beauty to “ordinary” miracles to the grandest of our blessings — and in so doing, to truly take nothing for granted. Over time, this practice helps us notice that every single moment offers us an opportunity to be grateful for something, even if it is simply being grateful for the rhythmic, nourishing breath which grants us life. Contrary to the ways gratitude can sometimes be taught, gratefulness is not intended to keep us from acknowledging what is difficult and challenging in our lives. Instead, it is a both/and proposition that helps to deliver balance and perspective. Living gratefully, we become more capable of holding the “ great fullness” of all that is true in our one “wild and precious”, and also messy and magnificent, life.
In powerfully consequential ways, learning to direct attention to what is worthy of your appreciation can guide you to a lived experience of “enoughness,” and even more than enough. When we take nothing in life for granted, we are far more awake to life’s gifts and blessings, and our privileges and true wealth. Suddenly, we can see the neglected corners of our homes as rich with things for which to be thankful. What seemed lacking in our relationships can now seem full to overflowing. Our bodies are nothing short of stunningly miraculous. What we might have seen as mere conveniences now seem like luxuries. The earth offers an endless interplay of inspiration, beauty, and teachings. When we live gratefully, our days can be one discovery after another of sufficiency, wonder, and abundance, and the most important part is that — once our basic needs are met — it does not require having (or being) anything more, better, or different.
Gratefulness helps us to develop an intimate, internal relationship with sufficiency and contentment. Contentment emerges from the experience of feeling replete and satiated.When we are in touch with this kind of fullness and enoughness — when we feel like we are and have enough — we become far less susceptible to cultural norms of consumption, comparison, and complaint; all sources of painful separation from ourselves, each other, and the planet. Separated from what matters, we can easily get caught in a “more is better, more is the answer” mentality and it gets very difficult to step out of this trance . We get so busy unconsciously striving for the next, better thing, as Soul of Money author Lynne Twist says, that we continually rush right over all of our “enough-points” without even noticing them. This is where insatiability, or never-enoughness, lies in wait…and because it IS a lie, only more suffering is assured.
Living gratefully is a powerful antidote to scarcity and insatiability precisely because the practice shines light on, and helps us to notice, what is already available and abundant to us. Since scarcity and insatiability are the drivers for so much that is unsustainable and unjust in our world right now, living gratefully can be seen as not merely a salve for self-satisfaction, but as a protective impulse that wakes us up to actively appreciate and act on behalf of all the people and things for which we are grateful. We do not need to wait for more, better or different before we show up with our hearts and hands open. When we are awake to all that is already enough in our lives, we can more readily turn our attention beyond ourselves. It energizes our ability to engage and give. Gratefulness truly has the ability to awaken us toward tending and preserving the values we know are worth cherishing, and all the fragile blessings of this life that are charged to our care. And it helps to cultivate the lasting conditions for generosity, kindness, compassion and the impulse to serve — all so needed in our world right now.
