Thanks, Theresa!

Yes. This is a good song. I am loving it 🙂

“The Best Day” By Atmosphere

Its worth a google of the lyrics. Its true that “everyday can’t be the best day”! And I think that’s knowledge that can add a lot of peace to a person’s life. It goes along with what I’ve been thinking more and more as grad school (slowly!!!) winds to a close.

Happiness is contingent on Gratitude.

A basic understanding that none of this is a given. The food, the air, walking, talking, and loving are all to be cherished.

Its not new information, but it seems to be left under so many rocks…forgotten and waiting to be uncovered again.

One thing I’ve learned about children, the ones I live with and the ones I work with, is that children don’t hang on to events that are past.

They don’t enjoy telling me about their school day, or what they did over the weekend. Its always about what’s happening right now. This can be good or bad. If we just had ice cream, and the kid is like, “How about a sucker?” As an adult, I find it irritating, and a part of me is screaming, “You just had ice cream!” But I’ve found its possible to connect with the idea that we’d all love to eat treats all day if our bodies could handle it. “Wow! A sucker sounds good, but we just had ice cream and a sucker will not be good for your body.” Children are surprising receptive to the truth.

I think that cultivating gratitude is about remembering the ice cream, being glad you had it, and being able to hold the memory in your mind and heart. Rather than grasping for the next treat.

I don’t think its about shame. Making yourself or another person feel bad for wanting more treats, instead gratitude is a shift toward noticing and keeping track of the good things in our lives.

“Everyday can’t be the best day” and we can develop an acceptance of the crappy and an gratefulness for the beautiful.