On Gratitude & Joy

Anna Dunworth
5 days ago
3 min read

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving - one of my favorite holidays for reflection. Reflections on family, life, history (both macro and micro), and all those tiny bricks we lay in our figurative homes and lives.

Above all, Thanksgiving is for gratitude, and for every moment we share with those we love.

Many find gratitude lists to be useful vehicles for a happy life. Though I've always kept journals, lists of things I love rarely make it into my written musings. Outside the pages, however, I try to make a habit of voicing the people, places, and things that I'm grateful for.

I've written often about the challenges of transitioning from a highly social career (and life) into stay-at-home parenthood, a phase of life marked by unfamiliar monotony. While small kids certainly have a habit of keeping you on your toes, much of the daily grind is mindlessly wearing in a way that teaching high school history could never be.

Over time, I've grown accustomed to (and accepting of) the boring parts, and it really doesn't bother me so much anymore - at least not how it did before. I've tried to use gratitude to reframe the monotony, and in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I thought this would be a nice topic for today's post.

Buddhism (and other schools of thought) teaches that the world is only as real as the way we perceive it, and thus, we can change everything by changing our mindset. This is a powerful lesson to learn, and one that I constantly work to embody. As such, I try to reframe the monotony of homemaking into the joy of the same - the simple pleasures in the small tasks that are so much more valuable than they seem.

A sink of dirty dishes can be just that - a looming mountain of anxiety, frustrating in its apparent endlessness. Or, it can be something else - a basin of warm soapy water massaging your hands as they therapeutically wipe each surface clean, remnants of the last delicious meal slipping away down the drain with your thoughts. The dishes can be beautiful, stacked to dry in a dimly lit kitchen, neatly turned down for the evening.

Every dropped crumb is a happy belly full. Every stray toy is an echo of a child's laugh, or a game played, or some other shout of fun in our happy home. Everything spilled, lost, broken, dropped, kicked, or tossed where it shouldn't be - it's a mess, but it's also our children learning how to exist in this world. Entirely new people coming into their own.

I find real pleasure in the little touches that teach my kids how to create their own spaces to foster a pleasant life. Opening the blinds in the morning to let in the sun. Choosing a favorite scented candle for your bedroom. Hanging art and photos, and always making sure that things are just so before settling into bed for the night.

It's so easy to make lists of things we like, especially the big obvious ones that we write down because we know that we are supposed to. It's harder, yet infinitely more valuable, to weave these gratitude practices into our daily lives, telling people when we are thankful for them, and reminding ourselves to transform our most negative thoughts into something better.

So let's think about this on Thanksgiving, a day with a complicated past but a simple present. A day for gratitude, and all the people we love. Cultivate that: gratitude, joy, and the wonder of the little things.

On Gratitude & Joy

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