If I had to choose one thing I'm most grateful for, it's this. | LOH Contest | #64
Gosh it's easy to get carried away pursuing the next thing! I've fallen into the trap, time and time again, of seeking and aiming and striving for the next experience, or thing, or level of income.
Now, I don't believe there's anything inherently bad about wanting something more for ourselves, but if our focus is solely there and we forget to look around at all the wonderful things (including people) we already have then life can become a little bit empty.
In recent times I have come to realise and appreciate just how fortunate I am. While I've had a gratitude practise informally for many, many years and formally (as in written down every day) for at least a year now, I got a new appreciation of just how lucky I am when I watched our fellow Hivians in Cebu and nearby towns and islands (in the Philippines) live through a Super Typhoon.
Photo by our fellow Hivian, Protean Creator (aka Roxanne).
Suddenly, for many of them, things that they had taken for granted, like shelter, power and water were no longer easily available. As I read post after post of their experiences I also got a chance to reflect on my life. I soon realised that I too take things like my big, sturdy house (shelter), my endless supply of electricity for our lights, laptops, phones, TVs and fridge (power) and the abundance of water we have for drinking, showering, washing and toileting all for granted.
Yes, sometimes I remember to be grateful for electricity in my daily journalling, but often it's other things like seeing the sun rise or the latest present that my partner bought me or the fact that I got to talk to my Mum on the phone that day and that she's doing okay.
And it's when I reflect on all the things that I am grateful for (even if I sometimes oftentimes forget things that I use multiple times every day like this computer) it's then that I realise that if I had to choose just one thing that I could be grateful for about all else, it's actually that I have an option to choose at all.
The fact that being alive and being a human being inherently comes with the option to choose is, I think, our greatest gift.
(Unless you go even deeper and be grateful for life itself, but sometimes life can be demonstrably difficult and at those times more and more people hate life rather than love it. So that's a harder one to be grateful for I think because it's impossible to hate your life and be grateful at the same time; these two emotions cannot co-exist. But I digress...)
It is the option to choose how we see a challenge that helps us navigate that challenge.
It is the option to choose where we put our attention that brings us our results in life.
It is our option to choose that influences how we feel about the life we have.
So given the choice, I choose to be grateful right now for choice, because that's where all my power comes from and feeling empowered and powerful feels far better than the alternative.
Q: What are you most grateful for right now?
This was one of the two questions posed in the Ladies of Hive community this week. This was the one I chose to answer. (See what I did there? 😉)
Are you a lady? Do you want to participate in this week's Ladies of Hive contest? You'll find all the details here. And if you're like Sam Smith (@samsmith1971) you can totally write an awesome post in answer to either of the two questions available. You'll thank me later. I'm sure of it 😂😊
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The freedom to choose is definitely something to be thankful for, because while we can do just that where we live, someone somewhere cannot.
Agreed. We have much choice if we live in wealthy countries.
But all humans have choices. All the time. Everywhere. Less choices in certain circumstances, yes. But some choices, always.
Viktor Frankl talked about this in his book, "Man's search for meaning". He was trapped in a Nazi concentration camp; one place in the world where you absolutely have far less choice than you or I do @ifarmgirl.
Yet it was there where he realised that, in fact, he still had choice.
He had a choice about how he would view his situation each and every day. He had a choice about how to view his jailors. He had a choice about how to treat those who he was stuck in the camp with. It was him, a person who had so little choice, that actually taught the rest of us that we actually have far more choice, far more often than we realise.
But that doesn't mean we should appreciate the wealth of choices we have in the lives we live right now, where we are right now, with all we have right now. And on that I totally agree.
We definitely have a choice, one way or another. I like that you shared about Viktor Frankl's experiences and the reflection that comes with them, thank you :) I must say he tapped into something powerful and did what seemed to be impossible for most of us. What a brilliant story that is! And yes, we do appreciate everything in our midst, the abundant choices we are presented with, and even the challenges that come our way.
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Our life is enough to feel grateful for. Good to read your post.
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I too am currently making a conscious effort to spend more time in gratitude for even the little things :D
Thank you for sharing <33
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And thank you @kaerpediem. It seems it is you I get to be grateful to for this prompt!
Hi @consciouscat, your post has been upvoted by @bdcommunity courtesy of @rem-steem!
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Aha! I see you @rem-steem !lol
Thanks for the upvote through BDcommunity ❤️😀🙏
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I totally agree with you. Reading all those things from those people at Cebu gave me a reason to be thankful. You've given a good point of what to be grateful for and that's amazing.
@teknon, awesome. I'm glad. And you're so very welcome 🙏
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Hello @consciouscat - I was really able to identify with your post here on a variety of levels. Thank you for writing it.
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Thank you @thekittygirl! ❤️ Grateful for the curation 🙏
@consciouscat I am fairly new to Hive and still somewhat confused on where to type, so this is congratulations on the 1st award for the comp. I know I wrote below too but here we go again.
I do believe you were the right choice to win this comp which is where I wrote about how your post spoke to me, so many times when I visit remote places I see choice not being an option. I spoke with a young teenage girl yesterday on this while explaining that in many parts of the world some girls have no choice, no freedoms and no options. Stories that will break any woman's heart that has a choice to say NO, this is my body!
This is why your post spoke to me so much, from another experience I had which was filled with sadness and strangely, my experience of being grateful for Choice linked back to Leaving Love Behind, because that is what we as women did, we loved the young girls with no choice, even if just for a few moments, we made them smile.
You wrote your article so well, so a HUGE WELL DONE YOU :):):) Grateful to have met you.
Hello lovely @serowa ❤️
[This reply ended up being very long. Big, gentle loving hugs to you too! I'm also delighted to have met you.]
Being new to Hive: no worries. I'm only a couple of months ahead of you and also still figuring things out by trying things.
No choice: I hear you. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to go and visit these girls and know that you could do nothing but love them and leave them in the circumstances they're in. That would have been heart breaking.
I also hear that, 1. We are so fortunate with the abundance of choice you and I seem to both have, and 2. Different people need to hear different lessons at different times.
Also, the reason your post resonated so deeply with me is that I too have experienced assault and felt like I had no choice with my body, that I too could not say 'no'. So it's an interesting enquiry to engage in, for both you and I, and anyone following along:
Where is the meeting point of
feeling like you have a choice and exercising that power
and
realising, in that moment, that your only choice is how deeply you accept what is?
Because even in the most horrific of situations we have a choice:
Do I embrace it or do I fight it?
Or said another way:
Do I accept what is or do I deny what is?
We often think that to change something we have to fight it. But reality always wins. It's much bigger than us - what is, is. But if we can embrace what is, right now and be with what is, right now, then it has a chance to move and shift and change, right before our very eyes.
@serowa, you know what this feels like in your body because you've experienced it; when you shared your experience of being assaulted and people dismissed it and told you just get over it and move on they were denying your reality and how you felt.
But when these 7 Men embraced you as you are and accepted your reality as painful and loved you as you were without needing to change you, then you had a spontaneous experience of healing and of having your heart open again.
This is what I believe is possible when we remember we have choice, in all circumstances. Healing is possible. Though I'm definitely not saying it's easy. If someone had said this to me soon after any of the times I'd been assaulted I either would have burst into tears or sworn loudly and viciously. It's unlikely the best lesson to teach anyone who has just experienced a traumatic event of any kind.
But us, as witnesses to the pain of others, have a choice as to how we see the other person. Are we seeing this person who is experiencing something awful, as a powerless victim with no choice who we cannot help? Or are we seeing them as an incredible, strong, capable human being who is able to withstand huge amounts of hardship and still smile?
My aim, @serowa, (as difficult as this is and I stuff it up endlessly, all the time!) is to see people as infinitely powerful, incredible humans and love them as they are with all the love I have to give. For this is the very best gift I can give them, and myself.
Yes, I completely agree with you @consciouscat. To look at those girls that we met, I think I felt the incredible pain that they were in day in and day out and by us being there we could show them another way. I know one of the guys is wanting to go back there with his new wife and some others to spend more time there.
I also mess up a lot! I still have issues with men who do not respect my boundaries and with words try and force themselves upon me, I give 2-3 warnings and then I snap in a nicer way now. I am able to talk about it with the 7 men and with the new lady friends I have also met which validate my stance on how I should be treated in life which is an incredible feeling, I always feel they have my back now!
And I feel even more empowered after this lasts weeks writings and meeting so many more wonderful women on #LOH.
😀 If I could have your back from across the world I would @serowa. Just imagine that I do 👭
You're allowed to defend your body.
You're allowed to say "f*ck off" or any version of that, in any way necessary to help you keep your precious self safe.
You're also allowed to pretend to be sweet and lovely and kind as a manipulation tool to get out of any situation that is unsafe, if necessary.
And you deserve to be treated like a godess.
You deserve to have a man adore you.
You deserve to have a man completely respect your 'no' as much as he loves your 'yes'.
And I want you to know that it's absolutely possible, from a woman who used to struggle to find her words, who used to struggle to honour her boundaries and who ended up in way more unsafe and awful situations than I would ever want any woman to ever experience... I now have a partner who adores me, who loves my "yes's" and 100% respects my "no's" - even if it's the middle of sex and my body asks to stop for any reason (which is rare) he still honours my "no".
I seem to be on my soapbox a bit around this topic. I think because it's so charged emotionally.
But hopefully you can see that, 1. I believe you deserve better, 2. I believe it's possible for you to have better, and 3. I have your back, from way over here.
Go you for finding and speaking your 'no'. 🙌
Nicely written post on gratitude @consciouscat 💜 I agree, sometimes it can be hard to feel grateful when we feel bad...
Yet one of my favorite spiritual teachers taught this lil' trick that I have found useful at times: When something happens or isn't working out the way we'd like it to, love it anyway. Take the situation and say "I love...(enter situation)" and you'll soon find yourself laughing about it.
Of course, I'm not referring to major tragic incidents in life. This is more about everyday things that come up, or even a bit bigger things like losing a job.
Because if we are truly grateful & we trust ourselves, and we know there will be something better coming around the bend...😍
Ooooh @lizablove, I love that trick! I've studied the work of a lot of spiritual teachings and I think at the core of them is all the same lesson: Love what is and it transmutes. Which is, of course, easier at some times than others. But what I appreciate about the way you've said this (above) is that it sounds like there's an element of playfulness or flippancy that I can bring to some situations where maybe I might get caught up in analysing or thinking and I could just tell it I love it instead and see what happens. I'm going to try this and see how it feels. Thank you! 😘