be thankful

There’s a common misunderstanding among all the human beings who have ever been born on the earth that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and just try to get comfortable. You can see this even in insects and animals and birds. All of us are the same.

A much more interesting, kind, adventurous, and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet.  To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is, how we tick and how our world ticks, how the whole thing just is.

Pema Chodron

My life is made richer by my failures, my troubles, my imperfections, and my stumbles. For these things I am not always grateful but I hope with practice I’ll learn to see these things as they really are: a moment to be appreciated and experienced just as fully as all the other moments in life.

****

This blog post is part of the Girl Hearts Camera blog circle where each month a group of photographers share their photo and written interpretation of the theme for the month. This month’s theme is “be thankful.” Make sure you check out how my friend Sarah’s interpreted this months theme as well!

be tricky

“When something does not insist on being noticed, when we aren’t grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event, we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.”
-Cynthia Ozick

Most of us don’t think twice about the fact that we have a number of amazing super powers. One of those super powers being the ability to walk. Who knew walking took such great skill, dexterity, strength and care? Babies know this and now so does my husband, Abe.

Sometimes what was easy becomes tricky.

Two weeks ago Abe was in a bike polo accident and injured his knee badly enough that he couldn’t walk without assistance. First it was me helping him hop from bed to chair, then we got crutches and now, just this week, he’s graduated to a cane.

Abe’s always had his strength to depend on and with the knee injury he’s had to slow way down to a snail’s pace. Things that seemed so simply before became hugely challenging. How do you take a shower when you can’t put any weight on one of your legs? How do you get dressed when bending your knee at all creates excruciating pain?

We often don’t appreciate the skill and talent we have until something happens to challenge us…or to take away our ability to live a “normal” life.

We have two choices when this happens: we can become depressed at our bad luck or we can use it as a moment to appreciate the complexity of our everyday lives. The everyday “humdrum” of doing laundry, washing dishes, cooking, cleaning, driving to work, brushing our teeth, getting dressed, eating our meals, going for a walk, making coffee, talking with our partners, our families, getting coffee with a friend…all these things require amazing skills that we’ve learned through trial and error and by watching and interacting with others around us. These skills might not make us famous, or garner attention or compliments, but we can marvel and be grateful for our amazing super powers if we pay attention to the little things and to the mundane moments.

****

This blog post is part of the Girl Hearts Camera blog circle where each month a group of photographers share their photo and written interpretation of the theme for the month. This month’s theme was “be tricky.” Make sure you check out how my friend Laura interpreted this months theme as well!