Mood is a strange thing. Sometimes the mood is light. Sometimes heavy. I guess awareness is the key. At least let’s be aware of changes in mood. Ignatius of Loyola, the guy who founded the Jesuits, was into mood. He recommended that people take a little time at the end of each day to become aware of their moods that day. One of the cool things he said was to remember in times of desolation that consolation would return. And in periods of consolation to be conscious that periods of desolation would recur. Once when I was physically ill my only consolation was that a time would come when I would feel better. Time, indeed, is a healer. So, if today, or any day, things seem really black and hopeless, do not despair. Console yourself with the thought that a time of consolation will recur. Spring will follow Winter. Light will follow Night. Hope will follow despair. Peace will follow war. Time heals all…
Tag Archives: light
Gratitude
I’ve written quite a bit before in various published columns in the print media about the ‘gratitude attitude’. Thankfulness is an attitude, an awareness, a way of looking at things. When we lose sight of the gratitude attitude, we tend to have lost our balance. This minute, right now, you and I have so very many things to be thankful for that, were we to enumerate even a tiny fraction of them, we would be here forever. People spend their lives wishing they could see yet not once today before now did I pause to be thankful for my eyesight. I myself spent many years longing for a home of my own yet, before this second, not once today did I pause to consider how lucky I am to now live in a home that I love. For years of my life I longed to find a life partner, someone I loved and who loved me yet how easy it is for me to take my wonderful wife for granted. And then there’s breath and a beating heart, the wonder of life, a wondrous thing and my one and only life, a heart beating that one day will stop, lungs that will cease to inhale and exhale, my life spent, yet not once before now did I, this day, become aware of, let alone thankful for, the transient gift of my life.
Let’s pause to be grateful for all that we have and all that we are. For those we love and who love us. For this moment. For literacy. For sight and light. For the Internet. Electricity. Our senses of hearing and touch, for taste, for the sense of smell. For colour, mobility, intelligence, consciousness. For sex and relationships, for our bodies. For music and books and art. For sport and passion and love. For time and healing. For serenity. For growth. For now. For all we are, all we have been and all we may yet be. For hope. For humanity. And again, for love.