30 Days to a Better Man, Day 5: cultivate your gratitude

There's two parts to this challenge. Part 1 is to cultivate your personal gratitude. This means making a list of ten things that you're grateful for. The trick is to not be thankful for superficial or general things, like health, family, a good job, and so on. No, the idea here is to dig under the layers and find things, little things, that you're grateful for on a daily basis. So, without further ado, here is my spirited attempt at such a litany:

10 THINGS I'M GRATEFUL FOR:

• sunsets - Heaven knows the universe doesn't need to light up the atmosphere with all those reds and yellows and oranges and pinks, but it does, and I appreciate it. 
• Korean immigration laws - Thank goodness there's a country that lets me live in it and pretend to be a professor and teach its students and pay me through the nose, because without it my dreams and I would have been sunk long ago.
• having a job that lets me travel - Working on a professor's schedule means that I have four whole months of the year to gallivant around the world and see the sights I've wanted to see since I was twelve. You can't beat that. Two years of hagwon purgatory have suddenly become worthwhile. 
• Swedish Fish - Without those little red fish-shaped candies, no visit Miss H and I made to the Skyline Drive-In movie theater in Barstow, California would ever have been the same. She brought a few bags home with her today. Time to catch up on all the TV shows that we missed!
• Brant and Joseph, my beer-brewing buddies - I would never have had the determination or the gumption required to start home brewing in Korea by myself. Thanks to them I have a store of goodly memories to tell about my time in South Korea...and a few dozen bottles of tasty brew in my fridge.
• my mad bomber hat - Made of real leather and rabbit fur and given to me as a Christmas gift by my parents a few years back. It really keeps my head warm in winter and cuts those icy winds down to size. It'll come in handy in Hokkaido. It may seem daft to be grateful for a hat, but no other chapeau suits my personality (or my head) as comfortably as that one. 
• absurdity - For reminding us that life is fundamentally crazy on so many levels, and that we need to slow down, realize it and laugh at it before we all go nuts. Also for being my modus operandi.
• radio - For connecting people, places, ideas, news, music, politics and free-mindedness across vast distances (and even between Earth and space) long before there was TV or Internet. There's a simple sort of elegance, warmth, beauty and intimacy to radio that television and the Web both lack. Radio (and vinyl records) fostered in me my love of music — long before I bought my first CD, I had a radio on my bedside table, dial twirled to the classic rock station. It brought me The Beatles, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Coldplay, Owl City, and too many others to name. There's something about gathering around the radio set and listening to A Prairie Home Companion that no episode of Family Feud or Golden Girls can equal. 
• H.G. Wells - He didn't trust his fellow man, accurately predicted the future (grim as it was) and taught imaginative youngsters like me that there was more to life than what we could see. Good on ya, Herbert.
• flying small airplanes: Not sure who to thank for this, but Orville and Wilbur Wright and Clyde Cessna all seem like likely candidates. I don't know who or what I'd be without flight. I'm so grateful to the aviation pioneers and airplane manufacturers who allowed me to taste that heady magic previously allotted only to birds and pterosaurs (and take Miss H out on some kick-ass dates).  

The second part of this challenge is showing your gratitude to others. 

3 PEOPLE I THANKED:

Mr. A: My animator/illustrator. He's been very patient with me, and has done some pro bono work for me in the past, creating concept illustrations of my works, which I never believe I've thanked him for. I gave him a very specific and heartfelt thank-you.

Mrs. G: A very classy wife, mother, and former classmate from the High Desert. She's actually taken the time to read (truly read, and think critically about) some of my works, and give me thoughtful and helpful feedback, not the usual "your grammar sucks" or "I liked this part" blather. She is my intended audience: the person I write to when I write science fiction. I thanked her sincerely for that, and for paying attention to what I do on FB (she never fails to "like" or comment on the silly stuff I put up there, inflating my ego enormously). She also sends me neat stuff from around the Web that she finds: hilarious memes, the latest gadgets from ThinkGeek, or the coolest updates from Popular Science.

Miss H: My fiancée, of course. I took her for granted there for about 18 months of our three-and-a-half-year relationship, and am trying to cure myself of that horrendous habit forthwith. She went home to the States last week and she brought back a truckload of useful stuff for me: delicious candy and snacks, extra pajamas and workout clothes, a new eyeglasses case, and a host of other assorted gewgaws. I took her in my arms, told her I loved her, what a wonderful wife she is (even if we haven't tied the knot yet) and that I really appreciate what she did. 

There you go! I've cultivated my gratitude. This day, more than any other, I think, has been a valuable lesson for me. I let things go. I take people for granted. No more. I think I'm a little more mindful of things now (isn't that what the Buddhists, gurus and psychologists are always on about — mindfulness?). Looks like this challenge is helping me out already, and we're not even a week into it.


Stand fast for Day 6.