Gratitude

Rough day at work left me feeling like a whiny baby. Decided to start reading this daily meditation book that's been collecting dust for some time now. Today's entry was about gratitude and it was the answer to my bratty day. This is from The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie.

August 1

Say thank you, until you mean it.

Thank God, life, and the universe for everyone and everything sent your way.

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. It turns problems into gifts, failures into successes, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. It can turn an existence into a real life, and disconnected situations into important and beneficial lessons. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow

Gratitude makes things right.

Gratitude turns negative energy into positive energy. There is no situation or circumstance so small or large that it is not susceptible to gratitude's power. We can start with who we are and what we have today, apply gratitude, then let it work its magic.

Say thank you, until you mean it. If you say it long enough, you will believe it.

Foiled Again!

Yeah...totally skipped Friday. Whatevs. Intended to resurrect MUSIC FRIDAY but got sidetracked.

I started re-reading Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott this week. It's one of my favorite books, but the last time I read it was years ago. TRAVESTY. Within the first few pages I remembered why I love this book and why Anne is one of my favorite writers. Her style is so easy and effortless. It reads like a friend talking to you from across the kitchen table.

The book is a non-fiction account of her journey to faith. As someone who struggles with faith (in everything) I've decided that it's a book I should read at least once a year to remind me that I am not alone. In the first part of the book (page 9) she writes,

"None of the adults in our circle believed. Believing meant that you were stupid. Ignorant people believed, uncouth people believed, and we were heavily couth. My dad was a writer, my parents were intellectuals...we were raised to believe in books and music and nature."

This bit resounds so strongly for me because I feel like a lot of the people in my life who consider themselves to be intellecutals exude this sentiment. Like being an intellectual and being spiritual are mutually exclusive. That opening yourself up to the possibility of a higher power is for the weak and naive. And really, I think that's sad. The arrogance of athiesm is something that athiests fail to see. To be so blindly sure, to claim to KNOW that something IS or ISN'T the truth, that God DOES or DOESN'T exist seems like a detour, it bypasses faith. To believe is to FEEL that something is true without having concrete evidence that it IS true. And I'm cool with that. Life is too short to be such a hardass about everything. I strive to live my life with joy and gratitude, to seek out truth and beauty in everyday experiences and to love everyone and everything as I want to be loved. I don't always succeed, but I'm trying. I think people who get so wound up about being right are missing the point. I'd rather be happy than be right. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I'm growing. I'm learning. I'm trying to live righteously. Tomorrow is promised to no one, and if my life came crashing to an end, I'd feel fine because I know that I figured out that I'm not supposed to figure everything out. Life isn't about what you know but how you live. How you treat people. How you treat yourself. Every day has the potential to be the best day ever and it might very well be your last. How will you spend it?

Reading and Coincidence...

So, right now I am finishing up The Celestine Prophecy, a novel about coincidence and insight, and how people and ideas present themselves in your life for a reason and the exact right and perfect moment. I started reading this book because it had been recommended to me several times over the years, and several times recently, which I took as a sign. Now, I am obsessed with signs and how coincidence is not really coincidence at all. Here is an example:

During a party on July 4th, I had a conversation with a stranger about books, and we came to discuss Tom Robbins. I mentioned that the only book of his I own is Still Life with Woodpecker which I received at a book-swap years ago and have yet to read. She said that her favorite was Jitterbug Perfume. I made a promise to myself to find this book. I went to the library and it is not in circulation in my area, so I let it go and moved on to reading other things. In the last several weeks, I've had not two or three but FOUR dear friends mention this book in passing and I was DETERMINED to read it. I got on Amazon a couple days ago and purchased a used copy which should arrive any day now. TODAY, I opened and read my horoscope which reads:

"AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): In addition to food, air, water, sleep, and
love, every human being needs stories. No one can psychically survive
without the continuous flow of narrative through his or her imagination.
And just as there is a big difference between the physical nourishment
provided by a salad or by a candy bar, so is there a wide range of quality
in the stories you expose yourself to. Soaking up the adventures of über-
playboy Hugh Hefner and his three girlfriends on the TV show "The Girls
Next Door" will probably deplete your energy and lower your intelligence,
while reading Tom Robbins' novel *Jitterbug Perfume* may enhance your
mental hygiene and sharpen your perceptions. What I'm saying here is
always true, of course, but it's especially important for you to keep in
mind right now. From what I can tell, you're ravenous for beautiful,
uncanny, uplifting stories."

CAN. YOU. F*CKING. BELIEVE. IT???

The universe wants me to read this book and wants me to read it immediately.
I am going to devour this book as soon as it arrives, this is just too spooky.

Love,
-Mandy

Tom Robbins excerpt...

Love this. Please enjoy.
-Mandy


"If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf
howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as
near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It's a program, a piece of
hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery.
Not a mystery, mind you, the Mystery. The one that can never be solved.

"To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and
everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires
expanding the soul. These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger,
imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics,
beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down.
These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness,
egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating
ketchup on cottage cheese.

"Data in our psychic program is often nonlinear, nonhierarchical, archaic,
alive, and teeming with paradox. Simply booting up is a challenge, if not
for no other reason than that most of us find acknowledging the
unknowable and monitoring its intrusions upon the familiar and mundane
more than a little embarrassing. More immediately, by waxing soulful you
will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what
the ancients considered a divinely animated universe. And on a day to day
basis, folks, it doesn't get any better than that."

- Tom Robbins, *Esquire* magazine, October 1993

Happiness...

This is an excerpt from Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Eat, Pray, Love -- which I highly recommend to everyone and anyone. I love this bit, and I think it's a good reminder for all of us.

"...People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments."

library quiet

somehow in the last god-knows-how-long i've become oblivious to how noisy life is. now that the tv is off, i find such solace in the silence. i went to the library in springfield today, and library quiet is a-whole-nother kind of quiet. it's so peaceful, especially surrounded by so many rad books. i brought home several, though there's no way i'll read them all by the time they're due back. i guess i was overeager. Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Trust Me by Updike, To The Lighthouse by Woolf and The Rum Diary by HST. i love library books because the pages are crinkly and worn and dog-eared and smell like an old closet. i even like the noisy protective vinyl jackets, hinged with packing tape and littered with labels and barcodes. there's a feeling of solidarity knowing that hundreds of hands have held each page and turned them one by one. perhaps this is revealing too much, but i like to smooth each page softly with the palm of my hand before i read it. it's a creepy display of tenderness for an inanimate object, but whatever, it makes me happy.

writing...

So, I'm currently reading "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert.  I am only a couple chapters in, and I find that I'm simultaneously moved and disappointed.  Moved because it is beautiful, simple, conversational wisdom that falls in line with EVERYTHING I believe about life and spirituality, and disappointed because I feel like it's a book I could have written, in very much the same style.  I guess my disappointment lies in the fact that it's taken me 28 years to finally realize that I don't really have any original ideas and that my writing style is not only popular but commonplace.  I guess if I want to start working on gathering my work to publish, I should focus on stories from my life that no one can imitate and derive from those stories the life lessons everyone else already seems to have a handle on.  They'll be written conversationally, with twinges of humor, but hell, it's a popular style for a reason right?  Cha-ching!  So, I guess that's a goal.  Sort of.  Goals have timelines though, so that's the next step.  That or figure out another way to be independently wealthy whilst steering clear of pyramid schemes, black-market organ harvesting rings and drug-runners at the Mexican border.  Not again, Tito.  Not again.