Tag: Gratitude

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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For the last few months, small joys have been my sustenance… Often these small moments fade from view with the passage of time. What makes it into our memory banks are the bigger things—either the zeniths or the nadirs—but what we end up longing for and leaning on in hard times are the little quotidian comforts and delights; they lift and carry us from day to day. Noting these joys is a muscle I’ve been consciously trying to exercise: training the eye to see them and training the mind to hold onto them.

I do want to make a distinction here between the practice of celebrating small joys and the culture of “toxic positivity,” where we’re told to be ever-grateful, to always search for the silver linings, to put a positive spin on all experiences, even the profoundly tragic. The author Barbara Ehrenreich has written critically about this cultural phenomenon with far more nuance than I can in this missive, but it’s a topic I’ve thought a lot about, especially in these last months. It’s easy to feel pressure to be someone who “suffers well”—grateful and graceful and stoic 24/7. But that doesn’t allow us to exist fully, to experience the full range of the human condition, from happiness to grief, from gratitude to envy.

I love observing tiny daily joys because it feels natural and easy, not forced, not pressurized, not all or nothing. And not only has the practice helped ease this difficult passage, it’s helped me identify what lifts me up, and then I can cultivate more of it. (Read the rest of her essay here.)

— Suleika Jaouad, from “Back Again” in “The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad” (September 1, 2024, Substack).

“Suleika’s career aspirations as a foreign correspondent were cut short when, at age 22, she was diagnosed with leukemia. She began writing her New York Times column “Life, Interrupted” from her hospital room at Sloan-Kettering, and has since become a fierce advocate for those living with illness and enduring life’s many other interruptions.” From her bio here.

Notes:

  • With gratitude to Mary Ann for sharing. Thank you.
  • Portrait of Suleika Jaouad from her Facebook page here.

Sunday Morning

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It starts slowly as I walk from the meditation hall to lunch. When I sit down to eat, the food appears as a mixture of everything that was required to bring it to the table. I imagine all the land, dirt, sun, and water needed to grow a leaf or a single grain of rice. I imagine all the cells inside a potato that have been cared for as they’ve grown and were pulled from the soil. I see dirt in the wrinkles of hands that dig and plant and harvest. I see the death and decay of the plants that came before them, relinquishing one existence for another before being plucked up as something new. People drive machines and fix water systems. They crate, bag, and box the food and place it on trucks and ships and planes, which are created by other people with big, brilliant brains. I see minerals dredged from the earth to make steel and aluminum and iron and watch people melt it down and pour it into forms that make the machines that move it all across the world. I marvel that the chair I sit in is made of materials that required thousands of minds to perfect before becoming an instrument of my comfort. The rivets on the table, fastening the legs to the plank. The material of the tiles and the hands that laid them on the floor. The trees that become the skeleton of the building. The corrugated roof that keeps the rain and sun off the tables. The bowl that holds the food and the spoon and the water in the glass.

Eventually it all leads back to a parade of every picture I’ve ever made flashing behind my eyes as everything I can see becomes worthy of gratitude. It’s a feeling I’ve forgotten. And as nuts as it sounds, I can see one big, infinite cycle coming together as a single bite of food. For the second time in my life, the word complete is incomplete.

As it begins to overwhelm me I feel a bit batshit-crazy. But what’s crazy isn’t the recognition that so much is worthy of gratitude. What’s crazy is that I haven’t noticed it before as I replay my life in fast-forward, thinking of everything that moved me, fed me, and shaped me and I see how fortunate I have been. Being here at all is a display of my good fortune. I’ve been lucky not only to see the world but to continue to expand myself by changing my lens. A guy goes into a short, spiritual exile halfway around the world and wakes up: It’s a humorous trope and I’m not blind to it. But it’s not just the privilege of who I am and what I’ve been able to do. Likewise, the revelation is accessible to anyone at any time, and how they come to it isn’t really the point. It’s the privilege of living at all, and this is a privilege we all share despite how hard life can be at times. The duality of our sorrows and joys is the buy-in. That I have a body that lives and breathes and moves is a gift. I have a body and mind that gets to be depressed, that gets to navigate ceaseless thought.

— Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within (Random House, July 9, 2024)

Notes:

Miracle. All of it.

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Hazy Sunrise. Six photos between 6:29 to 6:50 a.m. 67° F. August 16, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More pictures from this morning’s walk at Cove Island Park here: 1) Twilight and 2) Brody and Wally Play Date.

Notes:

  • Post inspired by: “I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery — air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.” — Sylvia Plath, “The Bell Jar” (Heinemann, 1963) (via Make Believe Boutique)
  • Post Title Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.”

Miracle. All of it.

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There are a finite number of times we get to do anything and after the first time it’s a count. We only get to look at the sky so many times in a life. There are a finite number of rainstorms and seasons that we’ll witness, and the number seems so big until it doesn’t. We never know when will be the last time we taste something or see someone or do anything at all. And for all the money in the world, time is not for sale no matter what the doctors say when we beg for more of it toward the end, finally seeing that we forgot to count the raindrops.

— Cory Richards, The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within (Random House, July 9, 2024)

Notes:

Guest Post: Janne bala nas ma btindas

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DK: “Beautiful photo, shame it was marred by a Human.”

Dear all,

I was inspired, actually triggered by a comment from David on one of Cara’s Cove Island Photos yesterday morning. It’s that photo above, and his caption below it that he shared in the comment section. The photo was taken by our very own Cara Denison, another outstanding Cove Island Park photographer.

This is not just any human. This is our human, David himself.
The photo was not marred. The photo is whole because he is in it.
Where I come from, we have a saying, “Janne bala nas ma btindas.”
This translates to “Heaven is not worth stepping into if it had no humans in it.”

… and again, this is not just any human. This is our Human.

Side story: A few weeks ago, while I was riding the elevator at work, a coworker looked at my badge and asked, “Are you the Sawsan from International?” “Yes, I am.” I looked at their badge and saw that they were one of the doctors I had worked with for years but never met. My office is on the ground floor, theirs is on the 2nd. For three years, we never met. When things happen, they seem to come in clusters. Within a few weeks, I met a few more individuals in person that I had been working with for years and had not met in person.  

Every time I met someone in person that I had known for years, a softness settled on me like a fog blanket. My soul needed the reminder that this is another human. I tend to forget.

Kicks and giggles aside, I come here to this blog to be inspired and, in this crazy world we live in, to feel human again.

And every photo by Cara documenting the human behind Live & Learn is Whole.

Now I know DK that you prefer no humans, solitude, and silence. The fact is that the core of your blog is the human experience. Sorry, you can’t always be the observer! 

Here’s another one of Cara’s favorite photos of DK at Cove Island Park. Cara said she’ll explain why she chose this photo in the comments section.

Sawsan.