I think about this every day. Found on Pinterest, but I couldn't locate original source.
Sometime this year - or maybe it was last - I started making a point of finding one good thing each day. My thought was to photograph the good, but soon I realized that a lot of the time, things happen while I'm driving, which isn't the safest time to snap away. I'm glad I dropped the photo idea because most of the beauty is fleeting, which is what makes it so beautiful. Taking out the camera and trying to capture it would mean I'd miss it, most of the time at least. The most surprising thing was that once I'd opened myself up to this thought, how often grace or beauty would appear.
Today it was perfectly scattered coffee beans on the top of the espresso machine at Starbucks, deeply contrasting against the silver and grey top of the machine, and fresh from our CSA, a bunch of purple kale that looked ready for a vase instead of the produce drawer.
This is why I was even more surprised this month, as I set out to be mindful of the good around me and be grateful for it every day, that things were mostly grumbly and dreary. There were good times and beautiful things, but the overall outlook of the month was blah. I don't know if it's the early darkness or the relentless pummeling of responsibility, but my god, I hope December is better. I want to pause my to-do list for awhile, especially because I've been pretty crappy at accomplishments lately. Today alone I: paid a mortgage we no longer have; failed to get a clean change of clothes to school, so after Rocket trudged through muddy water, he had to borrow bright flowered pants from a female classmate; and somehow failed to quit piano lessons for Clover without getting dinged for another month. That doesn't include the work the didn't get done, Christmas cards unordered, Christmas trees not decorated, and myriad merda.
The every day posts are not over, partially because I have a ton of stuff I am supposed to write about, but also because I'm participating in a daily holiday photo guide that will hopefully help me get my photo jojo back while appreciating the holiday details before they pass in a blur.
Rocket handed us an envelope from school on Thanksgiving that included the many things he was thankful for, and it ended with this:
Thanks to myself for being really kind to others and not punching them.
I've been kind and I haven't punched anyone either, which means maybe November was a success after all.
