I have found my happy place!
Today is the first day I get to wake up and write from my new house! I am looking out at beautiful nature and the sun starting to rise and guess what??? NO ROOSTERS!
Well, that’s not exactly true. I can hear one faintly crowing off in the distance, but it’s almost like a rooster-mirage, reminding me of days-gone-by.
One of the greatest joys ever, is witnessing Costa Rica wake up in the morning. The birds, the sun, the people—everything starts early here. In a country where the sun sets every day at 5:30 pm, our body clocks are set to rise and fall with the sun.
This has always been my preferred way to do things—early to rise, early to bed. I have visions of my productivity soaring, except for the fact that it’s so beautiful that I can’t help but sit and gaze in wonder for hours on end.
I strongly suspect that my ability to remember to give thanks will skyrocket here. There’s no denying that I’ve got a lot to be grateful for.
I had known that moving to another country and learning another language would grow me, but I didn’t anticipate that I would constantly be flooded with gratitude. Of all things that will change me, I suspect that might have the biggest impact of all.
Psychologists and Neuroscientists have long reported on the benefits of gratitude. Gratitude is known to improve our health, deal with adversity and build strong relationships. When you express gratitude, your brain releases the “feel good” chemicals, dopamine and serotonin, that enhance our mood and make us feel happy from the inside out.
Meister Eckhart once said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘thank you,’ that would be enough.”
So much to be grateful for.
Make choices to surround yourself with beauty and wonder. When you look in your child’s eyes, see them for the miracle they are. When you taste something delicious, let it linger on your tongue. Feel the warmth of your blankets or of the sun. Appreciate what it means to be alive in this moment.
For in that simple act of appreciation you enhance your experience of your life ten-fold!
It is perhaps the greatest irony there is. We read and toil and fight to get to what we hope is “the good life,” only to discover the good life lies simply in our awareness that it is right in front of us.
That we have the power, every day, to see it or not see it.
It lives in our “seeing.”
So the question to ask ourselves is, “Do I choose to see?”
Ah, yes! Thank you…..
©A Thoughtful Company, LLC
Beautiful, Kimberly. Reminds me of a quote by Thoreau:
“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”
I am grateful for you!
Congratulations on the move in, Kimberly, I hope you will sit in awe and gratitude many times over the coming years. With or without roosters.
I have had visitors for a week, and they left a couple of bananas and half a clam shell of blackberries in my fridge. Brown bananas… blackberries going fuzzy…
But as I also have sugar and eggs, flour and butter, now I have a banana bread and a couple of jars of jam and feel very productive. (I have yet to see if banana bread with blackberry jam is my next favorite thing.) But the guests can come back anytime.
Grateful for the time they are here and the “cleanup” that comes with it…