Forgiveness Practice (and some more of my story)

Maybe it's because I teach yoga and I'm a mother of small children, but when I am on social media, memes with affirmations and insights from gratitude journals are floating everywhere.

Keeping a gratitude journal is a way to help anyone feeling depressed. You cannot be grateful and depressed at the same time. I know this to be true. I have tried it.

Many years ago I lived in a mill village and worked in a factory where I had to report to a low-wage 10 hour shift at 6:30am five days a week, sometimes weekends. It was the best job that I could find in the area given my liberal arts degree and wisp of work experience in New York. It was the first time I had ever lived alone. I was in complete misery and completely stuck. Saddled with student loans, I was barely getting by while all around me the economy was booming and people my age were buying houses and boats. I had trouble making friends and making rent.

It was at the beginnings of my meditation practice, at the height of my martial arts practice, and at the point in my life where I was still figuring out how to live a good life. I knew a few things at that point but still did not have much skill in handling obstacles that I faced. This was about seven years before Facebook began and a time when emails were just beginning to be adopted by the business world. So in my disconnected misery one morning driving to work, I thought, what if I find three things I am grateful for right now. I still remember what they were.

1. I am driving a car that I love. 
2. Dawn is just breaking, and it is a beautiful sight particular to the foothills and lake that border the village where I live.
3. I have three friends who understand me, one close by, one I write to, and the other I can call anytime. 

I felt better immediately. I even smiled. Did it pull me out of the unhappiness? For some time that day, yes. For several months after that morning, every day, first thing, I thought of three things for which I am grateful. I slowly felt better about my situation, more hopeful. I slowly realized that I had a new navigation tool that would help me in my pursuit of a self-fulfilled life.

When I see gratitude journals and memes now, I am suspicious.  Is the part-time self administered therapy market taking away the substance of what practicing gratitude actually does? It's too easy to be inspired for a moment by someone's insight about gratitude and then scroll on to what all your friends did without you last night and all day today. Then another rabbit hole opens up because of an opinion piece and terrible news and how we want to just huddle in the world of cat antics, delicious recipes and taking meds. After a full day of screens, routines, and documenting your life on social media accounts, who has it in them to even remember to list three things they are thankful for?

What do we do about the problems we face and the problems in the world that we cannot escape? We can be grateful 1,000 times over and convince all of our friends and loved ones to keep a gratitude journal. Indeed, it helps us all to put our problems in perspective, and that can be a relief and is very reassuring. Absolutely. A gratitude practice is a boon that opens us to deeper experience of life.

But still, young black men are being shot point blank by policemen with no good reason. Elementary school kids know first hand what lockdown means. There is a mass of garbage floating in the ocean that is as big as the United States, and every minute 13 tons of trash is dumped into the ocean. We can be grateful to help ourselves feel better, but the world is going to shit, and we all know it. We are on a sinking ship, and most people using their power are either not clear on what to do about it or are in such denial that they are willing to sabotage the basic mechanism of government while devaluing life itself. It's heartbreaking, deeply disturbing, and to an immense degree we are powerless to the destruction that we are witnessing.

Life is made of struggle. There is no escape, no matter what we believe, hope, or wish. We all know this is true. Gratitude will only carry us so far. 

Pass the whiskey. 

While there is struggle, life also turns on the wheels of joy, happiness, and ease. Everything has a companion. Joy and grief. Sound and silence. Action and stillness. Nothing stands alone. None of us stands alone. Everything is in a dynamic. We are a dynamic. So, what is the companion to gratitude? What's the dynamic?

How about forgiveness? How about getting into the mess and finding your way through it and helping other people find their way through it? Forgiveness. Maybe in that place we can find the strength to live our lives with a realistic heart and a clear mind. And from this place we can better help others find the basics and the balance they need. Maybe a forgiveness and gratitude practice is what gets us to the ground that we can truly walk, where we can find our purpose and what we can do in times of difficulty, no matter how big or small. Maybe this forges a key that we can use to unlock the chains that bind us, whether they be passed to us from family and loved ones or are the very chains we created for ourselves.

Chelsey Tyler Wood Untitled Box Series 1, 2010

Recently, I started a forgiveness journal, and so far, I am able to rattle off five things each day. I'm finding the low hanging fruit though. As time goes on, it will be interesting to see how this will develop. If you are considering this, I suggest that you dig deep in yourself to find what really needs to be forgiven. Don't make it pretty. Even be basic about the journal itself. Write without all the doodling that could go with it, or if you doodle, then get real with it. Don't make it pretty. Keep the images in the weeds and out of the clouds. Go beyond the daily blunders that we all make. Go to the broken relationships, the addictions, the pain or chain of terrible events in which you played a part. Go to those places and forgive yourself like no one else ever has. Whenever you feel the urge to reach out, reach into yourself more for the forgiveness. And perhaps, once a week or even just once a season, forgive someone else. Want to try?