Thankful Thursday V.7

"The essence of life is that it's challenging. Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is bitter. Sometimes your body tenses and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you feel 100 percent healthy. From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally getting it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest."
-Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart.

I know I am alive today because I woke up feeling strange, from a nightmare where I was being arrested for stealing a pen. Yes, somehow something funny that happened manifested itself into my brain and gave me an anxiety dream. I had to laugh at myself for this one!



I know I am alive today because later I spent/wasted the time from noon until 3:30PM at the Brooklyn DMV, pretending to distract myself from misery with Whole Living Magazine...and left sans license. (not "liscense" as my predictive text kept spelling out on my "smart"phone.)

I know I am alive today because when I tried to watch Modern Family after the DMV debacle to get a laugh, my computer kept stalling out and I was unable to stream video.

I know I am alive today because I took the train into Manhattan to go to Anthropologie to look around, and I walked to what I thought was 375 W. Broadway...I was at 375 something Broadway at least...and there was no Anthropologie there.

Without all of these little (or big depending on how you interpret each situation)...nuisances, I would have perhaps not have noticed the little things that happened today as acutely as I did.

First off, a BIG thing! Mark gave Missy the ring today! Now I can blog freely and openly about our adventures in covert Wedding dress shopping and planning out the ceremony!

I am thankful that my best friend has found a loving partner, and I am thankful for her happiness.

And now some little things, some of which may have gone unnoticed had the bad things not happened...

I am thankful for the sweet smell of tulips wafting through the air in the city.

I am thankful for a beautiful sister, inside and out, who will pick up the phone anytime even if she knows she is just going to hear me complain about the DMV and how incompetent they are.

I am thankful for past relationships blossoming into friendships, and for the ability to set aside anything that irks us in order to help one another out with advice and a friendly ear.

I am thankful for talented and hardworking people in my life, who I am consistently proud of and inspired by.

I am thankful for his wet nose on my hand in the subway, as I read wise words about accepting life, with all of its ups and downs. That little shared moment made all the more sweet by the pangs of today's mishaps.

I am thankful for both the ups and downs of life.