Gratefulness

I've been sad lately about the health problems and suffering of people I care about. My close family member with thyroid cancer. My mom's strokes and Bell's palsy. I also found out recently that a friend of mine is undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. I've been feeling a little guilty lately about actually being healthy, when so many people I know are not.

I remember that the diagnosis of thyroid cancer came about a month after I started T'ai Chi. And I thought, this is another motivator for me to do T'ai Chi. It'll help me stay grounded and calm, so I'm not constantly stressed out about the cancer. And it will help strengthen my own immune system, so it will maybe help prevent my getting cancer some day. So here I am doing something to try to stay healthy, and at the same time I'm feeling guilty about being healthy. Sometimes I'm just an idiot.

Guilt is such an unproductive emotion. And what am I going to do anyway? Try to make myself sick? So no more wasting energy on that. That's a glass-half-empty way of looking at things. So what's the glass-half-full view? Gratefulness.

There is a wonderful gratefulness meditation in a book I have. You basically just sit and think of all the people and things in your life you're grateful for and why. It may seem like you'd run out of things, that you couldn't possibly fill 20 minutes doing this. But I found that once I got going, the list was a lot longer than I realized. It brought to my conciousness some things I didn't even realize I was grateful for. It was very affirming and uplifting.

So here is my gratefulness meditation (don't worry, I won't ramble for 20 minutes):

I am grateful that the thyroid cancer was only in the tumor and not spread throughout the thyroid, nor to nearby lymph nodes.

I am grateful that I'm going to visit my mom next week, and I can look her in the eye and tell her how much I appreciate all she taught me.

I am grateful to be back in touch with my friend, whom I haven't seen in a couple of years, and I look forward to going hiking and laughing with her.

These strong and wonderful women are in my life, and I am grateful.