Yesterday the sun shone, so I took my 6 year old daughter to the park. After what felt like days of rain, seeing the sun shine made me almost cry with gratitude. So much rain lately, as if the world has been crying!
The simplicity of playing in a park in the fresh air – seeing rosy cheeks and smiley faces. Something that until last year would never have made me emotional, but that fact that I was, I found intriguing.
Us spiritual folk often strive to see the bigger picture, the reason behind all the lessons.
Sometimes, I think there isn’t a lesson, its just life. But with lockdown I know I'm not alone in thinking “what am I meant to be learning from this”. Mostly because I will not ‘waste’ this time, the time (oh so much time) on the usual trivial stuff. I want to come out of it wiser!
But I haven’t dared think too far in advance and what life might look like once this isn’t so prevalent. I have to be in the here and now, we all do, as we are unsure of what the future looks like.
So after feeling emosh in the park my thoughts went to “is lockdown making us grateful”?
Lots of people are probably thinking there is nothing to feel grateful for, we have lost so much and that is so true. But its as if our needs have been stripped back to the basics - warmth, security, food, if we have those we cant help but feel grateful, because its all we have?
Usually for me, a day to be grateful for would involve a day out with my family, lunch, maybe a nice dinner but the fact that just seeing the sun shine on the kids in the park made we want to rejoice says it all.
When we have our full and glittery lives stripped back like lockdown has forced us to do, we are left with the stark realities of our new found lives. Were we happy before? Are we happy now? Will we keep those changes forced upon as perhaps we've discovered they suit us now? We no longer need the quick fix shopping trip or the expensive day trips, do we?
I don’t believe thousands of people had to die so that we could discover gratitude, but I feel it important that we take something from this truly bizarre year and work it into our lives so that none of this was for nothing, just some awful event in history.
Is lockdown making you grateful for the small things? Do you resent being almost forced to feel gratitude in what is, by rights, a life we have built for ourselves and has now been stripped back?
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