Thankfulness Thursday

This one is going to be LEGIT quick. I have had a crazy day but I wanted to write something for the day so I didn’t “miss” a day. This might seem like a “cliche” kind of post, but cliches are often cliches for a reason, so bear with me.

All I want to say for today is that no matter where you are in life, no matter how ill or well you might be, no matter what kind of darkness is surrounding you, please remember to at least say or think words of gratitude for what you have. I know what it is like to be at what seems to be the bottom below the rock bottom below the rock bottom I have hit that I thought couldn’t be any worse … and I know there are literally billions of people on this planet who have it much “worse” than I do. Again, to reiterate what I said in my last post, recognizing the suffering of others changes neither your suffering nor theirs. However, it IS beneficial to you, no matter how bad things might seem to be or how bad things really are, to recognize how fortunate you are. If you are reading this now, you are one of the most fortunate human beings on the planet. That doesn’t mean you’re the luckiest in every part of life – we all know things don’t work that way, that chaos and change are the only “constants” in life. But if you have access to the Internet, and access to all the information on the Internet, and access to all of the people who can also access the Internet, you have infinitely “more” resources of all kinds available to you than basically any other human being who has ever existed.

When things get really bad for me, I think about this confluence of factors that have essentially allowed my existence – even if I think about my early childhood when most people in the US didn’t even have access to the Internet, I realize how fortunate I am even to be able to research the various treatments that are proposed to me, how fortunate I am to have met so many people around the world with different illnesses and disabilities and how their struggles intersect with mine – their strength has often kept me going during the worst of times, &c. &c. &c. It is really a huge thing just to remember that you are likely in a position of relative safety as well (I doubt many people in “war zones” are checking on Word Press blogs!). To think about these things does, at the very least, calm my mind a little bit during the more turbulent times, the times when the rug has been pulled out from under me … and under which there seems like nothing but a bottomless void.

So PLEASE, whatever you are doing, however you are doing it, and however you are doing in general, take just a few minutes to recognize the things for which you “should” be grateful. Do not make “thoughts of gratitude” necessarily in comparison with others (you don’t have to think about the people in “war zones” as mentioned above – again, thinking and worrying about these sorts of things changes nothing; the only real “change” I can see that such actions enact is causing the “thinker” undue stress.); just be thankful for access to information, for the roof over your head and a bed in which to sleep, for even the ability to read. These things really are HUGE and they tend to be “swept under” that proverbial rug with all the other minutia of daily life, even for someone with severe chronic illness. Take solace and comfort in the recognition of safety and access to information and people; for simple abilities and even for simple “chores” that often seem tedious, at best; allow your heart and mind a few moments of peace just to recognize these things. This is, in fact, the very first step toward acceptance – a topic I want to talk about in great depth in posts to come.

With all of that said, I hope you all have a happy and healthy day or night wherever you are in the world! I will be back soon! And THANK YOU!

❤ Always, Beth

P.S. I do apologize much for the lack of copyediting in these posts; I am trying to come back and at least do a quick secondary read / “re-write” as I go through them in time, but the time during which these ideas come to me and about which I CAN write about them is precious time … so I do tend to just type out what my mind is thinking … very “stream of consciousness”-like writing. At any rate, I realize a “blog” doesn’t really WORK this way (at least as far as the writing of a writer goes!) so I will be working to edit these posts as I can! Thanks much for your patience!