I catch myself saying, Oh Thank You God/Goddess/Divine/Master Ji/Kwan Yin/Shiva/Brahma/Ganesh/Amma, often in the day.
Just now as I walked down my stairs, I caught a thought of something I could do to make my life easier, work smoothly, gently. Just as it entered my consciousness, almost immediately after, I offered up Thanks for allowing me to have the thought and felt Gratitude enter my consciousness.
I am Grateful for the utter gift, the ability to have to feel Gratitude in my heart.
It has come to pervade how I see my life.
My only part in its creation was asking for it, and it was given. I asked for Joy to enter back into my life, I asked for the ability to love my life again.
Conscious Gratitude expands this Joy.
Giving, feeling, having Gratitude for small, tiny, everyday things which happen, which go smoothly, which make my life easier, conversations, interactions with people which work, which feel good, which leave me Whole.
This awareness of Gratitude has been going on for at least the past year.
Prior, I was too depressed to see the value of my life without Margaret my wife/partner/soul mate who died too suddenly January 3, 2006.
Prior, a year or so ago, I often wished to end my life.
Thankfully it remained only a wish-thought and nothing more, never graduating to actual behavior.
For at least the past year, daily, often several times each day, I give Thanks for something which has just happened which allows me to make my life easier, work smoothly, feel my Humanity and Oneness with other people, with the Divine.
Often the thing I give gratitude for not only affords me the seconds it takes to feel, and give Thanks, the thing I am grateful for often elicits such sheer and total Joy in me, that I let out a squeal, often several squeals of pure glee!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
I have fun back in my life, and with fun, I have music, and doing, creating, interacting, teaching, watching how my life is unfolding, conscious of the unfolding. Conscious and relishing this last twenty or so years of my most rich, full and wonderful life.