Guns and Gratitude

I don't know about you, but I am really starting to focus more and more on what I'm grateful for in the course of a day. Take yesterday for example when my sister Cyndee was here visiting from Oregon. We were visiting on the porch and comparing stories trying to outdo each other with happy endings. All of a sudden she gets a gleam in her eye and starts talking about the 12 gauge shotgun she just recently purchased and just so happened to have in her truck.

I have talked about the rural, country setting I live in, so you no doubt can see where this is leading. Since we're outside of city limits, there is no ordinance restricting us from pulling the trigger and pointing at the likes of tin cans nailed to a board, or avocados in the case of my husband. Cyndee runs off to the back of her truck to show Dewey her new toy and before I can bring the dogs in to hide under the bed, there's loud reverberations amplifying throughout the valley.

Which leads me to what I'm grateful for today:

I am grateful that even though I'm not crazy about things that go boom, they put a huge smile on Dewey's face and that really does lift the corners of my chops.

I am grateful that my little sister and my husband share a friendship and spirited adventures.

I am grateful that the whole neighborhood didn't knock on my door complaining, just one loud shout from someone down below yelling wicked curse words about one's lower orifice...

I am grateful that I am starting to appreciate the sunshine even when it appears dark and cloudy. I know eventually the brightness will be blinding and my tri-focals have a built in shading device.

I am grateful for living in the shadows of Camp Pendleton and being rocked to sleep with louder detonation than a 12 gauge can muster. It means they can get some practice in before heading across the sea to the land of caves.

I am grateful for animals that love me and know that I will protect them. During a bathroom break while the snipers were target practicing yesterday I had the pleasure of being visited by three dogs who needed my reassurance and became glued to my feet. Only the cat seemed unaware and unconcerned.

I am grateful to stars like Charlie Sheen and Brittany Murphy. In might be in poor taste to mention it, but my life is fine in comparison. I'm not married to a rich, pompous, abusive, over-indulged, sex-crazed actor and I'm breathing and vertical. Sometimes it just takes a gander in the latest tabloid to see how blessed we are in our little mundane world of real life.

I am grateful for all the reasons I have to grin, laugh and joke. Even the morbid and oppressed can become hysterically funny when viewed in positive light.

I am grateful to hear on the news that Thursday and Friday will give us temperatures in the high 70's. For those of you looking out at dark skies and blackened snow banks remember this is my gratitude list, you gotta create your own!

I am grateful that for 2010 losing weight isn't going to by on my New Year's Resolution List. However, eating with intention and creating movement every day will be.

A friend of mine sent me the following article yesterday and I thought I would share it with you as another affirmation of how recording what you're grateful for can enhance and ultimately change your perspective.

Give Thanks, by Jill Duman in an article from Wellness magazine:

Cultivating gratitude can boost well-being and may help you sleep better. Gratitude is a fundamental component of most spiritual paths and a growing body of research suggests that it has important health implications, too, including better sleep, fewer physical ailments and a greater ability to cope with stressful situations.

"Gratitude elevates, it energizes, it inspires, it transforms" says Robert Emmons, a University of California, Davis, psychology professor who has helped champion the study of gratitude as a factor in mental and physical health.

A series of studies he conducted in 2003 found that people who kept weekly written records of gratitude slept longer, exercised more frequently, had fewer health complaints and generally felt better about their lives when compared with those who didn't.

Practicing conscious gratitude has also been linked with positive mental health. Todd Kashdan, associate professor of psychology at Virginia's George Mason University found that when veterans with postraumatic stress disorder kept gratitude journals, they experienced a greater sense of overall well-being in their lives. "There are two parts of being grateful," Kashdan says. "One is recognizing that someone benefited in some way, then mindfully seeing the connection to yourself. You have to be really in the present to see what's happening in your life, what's causing things to happen, and how you fit this into things bigger than yourself."

A gratitude practice is a a natural companion to yoga, which "offers numerous opportunities to reflect on all there is in one's life to be grateful for," says Emmons. To begin consciously cultivating gratitude, try considering what life would be like without a pleasure you now enjoy, or think about who you are grateful for. A daily gratitude journal can help you be more mindful of these things in your life. But your gratitude practice doesn't have to be scripted. Simply taking time on a regular basis to mentally note your blessings is a step in the right direction.