Making it New

I find that a greater sense of gratitude has helped me become a happier, friendly, more engaging person in the past year. Practicing gratefulness is a conscious decision, not unlike the Buddhist's eschewing desire, that leads to a greater fullness (gratefulness = "great fullness") and sense of being at peace with the world.

The practice is at home in many contexts that we find ourselves in, and I want to share one such anecdote that links gratitude and relationships.

I once went to a conference on relationships. Most of the presenters were therapists who had all kinds of elaborate theories about what made good relationships. Then a Buddhist lama got up and said, "I know the secret to keeping love alive. It's simple. All you have to do it act as if you have just met this person and are falling in love. When you meet someone you are interested in, everything they do is wonderful. You love looking at them, hearing what they have to say. Even when they play you country western music, which you might dislike, you think, 'Well, maybe Tammy Wynette isn't so bad after all.' As time goes on, however, you take the person for granted and fight over Tammy Wynette. So the solution is to see your loved one new again."

The therapists were up in arms, prolaiming that such a task was too hard. "Oh," said the lama, "I said it was simple. I didn't say it was easy."

The lama is right. The secret to love -- and a sense of joy and gratitude toward all things living -- is to see, feel, and hear as if for the First Time. Before the scales of the habitual clouded the brilliant blue sky outside your office window, the tangy juiciness of an orange, or the smooth softness of your loved one's hands. Before you got used to her kind words, or his musical laughter, that they became invisible to you.

Recently, my husband Don had vividly brought home to us the truth of how easy it is to get blinded to the miracles around us. When we first adopted Ana, we couldn't sleep -- we were too busy looking into her peaceful face and crying tears of gratitude. Now, a mere four months later, Don, who is home all day with her, finds himself taking her presence for granted, already losing that overwhelming sense of appreciation that she was sent to us.

"I get bored, he says, "because it is so much the same, day after day. But her spirit, her presence, is no less a miracle today than it was four months ago, or than it will be four or forty years from now. And when I can remember that, I catch myself 'falling asleep' to the miracle, and the awareness wakes me again and my heart once again fills with joy."

When we can live our lives as if it is always the first time -- the first time we made love, the first time we gazed upon the face of our beloved, the first time we tasted ice cream, the first time we saw a bird-- we won't have to try to experience a sense of gratitude. It will be there automatically, as a natural response to the beauty and the bounty around us.