Gratitude against all odds

When love sucks!

I was once given a mug with Brother David’s text: it’s not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy. My grandmother talked about counting her blessings as a way to get through the nights, when worry for each one of her ten children robbed her of sleep. It is as much a mental discipline as a form of devotion to the pure beauty of being alive.

And it doesn’t come for free. More often than not, it is a disciple that is forged, not once, but time and again, in the fires of adversity, when our happiness seeking ego finally collapses and dares to fall apart in the loving arms of the divine.

My own forging began as a young Dutch journalist in the UK, determined to change the world with her insightful writing, but having very little of value to say. Up until then I’d led a happy-go-lucky life in which pretty much anything that I set my mind to, came about without too much effort. I felt charmed, loved by the gods, and more than a little smug! Gratitude came easy in those days. The kind of superficial gratitude that goes hand in hand with a life not yet fully lived. And to no one’s surprise, except perhaps my own, this brittle gratitude quickly morphed into narcissistic outrage when my ‘decision’ to become a mother was thwarted by not one, but multiple miscarriages. What the hell did the divine think they were doing? I, the paragon of superficial joy and servitude to the masses, to be so humbled, so humiliated.

The message was clear; “time to grow up Lysanne. Wake up to the depths of suffering that will truly teach you to appreciate joy.”

Only by coming face to face with my deepest and darkest nature, could I begin to appreciate the light that inevitably shines through when all seems lost. It was a deep process, lasting many years.

Because the training went on; parents who died too early, a divorce, and then, last week, the loss of my beautiful companion Ody, the best dog that ever was. And perhaps life’s tough training school finally began to bear fruit, as my overwhelming feeling, despite his loss, is gratitude, amidst the sorrow and the odd ‘Love sucks’ moments. Gratitude for this very special creature who crossed my path some six years ago, and has now continued on another. Gratitude for a son and extra-daughter who surrounded both Ody and I with a wall of strength and support. And gratitude for a little granddaughter who distracts and fills with joy, even when your heart is breaking.

And no, this is not positive ‘stinking’ as one of my former trainers, the wonderful Margot Russell used to call it. Or spiritual bypassing. Both strategies have been part of my armoury and I know them well. This is, as the Swedes say, bade/och, (both/and), grief and gratefulness. Or even grateful grief. Yes, Love sucks, because grief is the price we pay. And it hurts. But a loveless life would hurt so much more.

Grateful happiness comes and goes and is not ours by right. The hard work of happy gratefulness is never glib and superficial. It requires the constant inner work of re-establishing trust in the universe, banking those moment of effortless gratitude, and mining the far richer, deeper seam of gratitude in adversity. There is nothing more corroding than concern for the future, just as there is nothing more uplifting than the pure innocent joy of the moment. Here and now. Breathing, upright, needing nothing more than to know you are held unconditionally by this deep unseen force that is life, even if at times you believe the connection to be lost.

At the time of the summer solstice it is hard to remember the gloomy December days, when we slowly inched our way towards the moment when the sun would return to us. From this weekend on, the nights will once again begin to lengthen as the cycle of the seasons continues to roll. Just as is it does in the cycles of our own lives. And in the end, we serve the greater light that is born again and again, in the midst of winter, as well as in our own lives.

When we can embrace the seasons of darkness and light in our lives with the same equanimity and faith with which we trust that summer will follow winter, light will follow dark, life will follow death, then we develop a profound gratitude for belonging to the great arching wheel of fortune, tumbling and turning us through this incarnation, until joy and pain become forged into one grateful breath that sings gratitude for the miracle of just being alive.