Making gratitude a lifestyle goes beyond the sporadic “thank you” and that equally infrequent overwhelming sense of privilege we feel, to a more deliberate attempt to cultivate a grateful heart. They say practice makes perfect, or at least gets us close enough to transforming a habit into a character. One way to practice gratitude is by going the extra mile of writing gratitude letters to people who have made a positive difference in our lives. An email works too, but this kind of “thank you” demands that we write on paper and deliver the letter in person. Very particular, I know, but if…
Second thoughts
From Mindfulness
Life Is Not A Sprint
I’ve been feeling stuck lately, trapped in the torturous repetition of commuting, working and getting whatever joyless sleep I can. I cycle the loop weekday after weekday from one month to the next till it’s “Happy New Year!” and the old beginning of the same old life arrives with muted fanfare wherever the first of three hundred and sixty-five midnights finds me. All activities outside this routine are brief intermissions between the dreary acts of an extended real-life drama, flashes of relief from the grind. I wish adulthood came with a warning label: ‘This train doesn’t stop till you do, permanently. Get on at your…
How Familiarity Kills Lovely Things
If you forget that I’m a miracle, how will I excite? And if you become ordinary in my eyes, how will you delight? By nature, a relationship demands (some kind of) exposure to be. It requires a baring of souls and lives for the ones involved to learn about each other, grow into each other…