From Checklists to Inventories
A Gratitude Mindset
I wrote recently about positive thinking (The Self Is a Positive Thinker), relating it to gratitude and to truth. Truth is a tricky matter, but gratitude - I spent a moment reflecting on it.
Gratitude is a mindset: from checklists to inventories.
I was driving home once after a business trip, getting back to the awareness of what awaited home. Solitude 24 / 7.
A secret underground door suddenly opened: all this may be nothing but the other face of complete freedom. I could flip the solitude into my lifelong yearning.
I wasn’t alone, cut off, disconnected. I was safe and free from the traps I’d been in: the wrong relationships, the wrong work, the wrong home.
It didn’t exactly feel like gratitude, at least not what one usually imagines it might do. But it made the burden feel my own, chosen, accepted.
And it filled me with wonder, seeing how, in truth, we build the world with our thoughts.
Well, yes. You are right. Loneliness has two faces. You can feel it as a burden, as something that stalks you, grinds you down and devours you. A repeated, unwanted stalker. Or, you may as well see it as solitude. Like that inner state of freedom, when nobody steals your time, nobody destroys your world. I am alone. But I feel my state of being alone as voluntary solitude. And, most of the time, I enjoy it. Most of the time.