Gratitude: Day One

I’m absolutely hopeless at New Year’s resolutions. I have a cussed streak which makes me kick against anything obligatory or mandated. But this year, I would like to make a change. I’m conscious that I have so much good fortune in life, and I don’t want to fritter that away with pointless worries and thoughtless frets and negative thinking. I like to think that I’m a roaring optimist, and so, in some ways, I am, but I am keenly aware that I have a fatal tendency to run doomsday scenarios in my head. So I spend lunatic amounts of energy worrying about things which have not happened and which might never happen.

I’ve been reading a lot about gratitude over the last few years. I understand its power and I understand that it is a discipline which can change your life. Yet I never quite practise it. I throw a sop here and there to the gratitude gods, but I don’t devote myself to their service. And I think I would like to.

I’m rather cautious about doing this on the blog, because I fear it may get frantically dull. I really am grateful, almost every day, for my fingers and toes. Especially my fingers. They are typing these words now, at seventy words a minute. Imagine that. They really are my life and my livelihood. I think I might be grateful to them every day. There may come a moment when you wish I would shut up about my damn fingers. 

There will be other regular loves. I love my opposable thumbs. I’m idiotically grateful that I have legs which can walk. They carried me down to the field this afternoon, where I stood with my mares and breathed in their peace and life in the gloaming. I looked up at the new moon, and I was grateful for the moon, and the sky, and Scotland, and the stillness, and the beauty, and the fact that I don’t live in a noisy city. 

I was grateful for my eyes, which allowed me to look at the beauty. And come to think of it, I am grateful for the people who invented spectacles and the people who make spectacles, so that I can see the beauty in clear focus.

I was grateful for my funny lurchers, bounding about with merriment and joy. Even though one of them ate a whole camembert this morning. I was looking forward to that nice bit of cheese. But it is only a bit of cheese.

I’m grateful that I can sit in my quiet room with heat and light. I think I might be writing that sentence quite a lot in the next year.

I’m grateful that there are kind people on social media and that there is racing on the telly and that there is good in the world. I’m grateful that there are dedicated humans out there who have rescued the Duke of Burgundy butterfly from extinction. I didn’t even know there was such a butterfly until today, and I did not know that it was in mortal peril. And now I know that thousands of devoted souls have worked to save it. That really is something.

I’m grateful for my mind. I’d like to expand it this year. I’ve got an idea that I should try and learn something new every day. I’m not sure whether this will be possible, but I’ll give it a go. Today, I learnt about the butterfly and its saviours. (Yesterday, I learnt that some horses are prone to holding their breath, and that you can get them to relax and breathe by using the canter. That is a rather niche fact, but it is the kind of thing that gives me pleasure.) 

Perhaps the new thing every day might stop the gratitude list from growing stale and dull, but I still think there may be rather a lot of repetition. Because of this, I’m going to start it quietly. The blog had rather gone into hibernation anyway, and I’m not sure how many people come here any more. So I feel that I can write things here which are almost private. I need the discipline of publishing, but I don’t want to be stymied by the terror of boring an audience into losing the will to live. 

So, if you are reading this, it will be our secret. Who knows? It might be more fascinating than I think. I’ll obviously try not to be a crashing bore, but I can’t make any guarantees. And if you are kindly accepting that risk, then I am grateful for your forbearance.