by Christine Gray

I got up this morning with a determination to get to a support group I had not been to in a while. I have been feeling very lonely, unseen and unheard by anyone around me who might truly help me feel connected to the planet and to my life. Over the past couple of days I have been having such interesting experiences of connection, as if the Universe were gently whispering in my ear some obvious fact that I just wasn’t getting, or hearing.

Friday I went to the local health food store to get a couple of products and there I met a man I found very interesting and was glad to have spent time talking to. At first I had my usual attitude of wanting him to go away, not take my time from me talking to me, and then some part of me just decided to spend the time listening to him. He was taking inventory of all the products on the shelves, and he seemed to know an incredible amount about everything. Turns out he had a Ph.D. in nutrition, and had spent a couple of decades working for Purina.

I learned a few other facts about his life, all very interesting, and all oh-so-different from my own life experience. I don’t know what it was about me that made that man take a half hour and talk his life experience away. His wife had auditioned for and been accepted as a soprano with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, but she hated being there and after a short time, left. His family owned a huge ranch in North Dakota, but as part of the trust to preserve the land, his generation couldn’t inherit it. Only the next one could. He had cooked a Thanksgiving feast fit for a king and all the surrounding country if what he said was true. He spoke with such love of the land and such disappointment that the next generation just didn’t share that connection. All they wanted was their money from the trust that land would bring.

Finally he went back to his business and I went on to look for products in another area of the store. I left with the things I had come for and something more. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on that had come from spending some time talking with that big man with the bright eyes and a need to engage. He filled me up when I had come in empty, not even realizing that emptiness was there.

Later that day I got in an elevator. Another woman got on with me. We were only going a couple of floors together, in an impossibly slow lift. We talked about the weather. We talked about elevators. Somehow it was funny, and it was fun. Maybe we were together a whole two minutes. Me and a stranger. She got off the floor below mine. I almost expected to see a mystical white feather on the floor of the elevator, the way people do in the movies when they’ve been visited by an angel. She, too, filled that empty place. So much so I really thought about it. How God makes every day meaningful. How prayers can be answered in the most mysterious of ways.

This morning I went to my meeting. The essence of the topic discussed was about giving back to others when you have been helped yourself. How that exchange changes both of you. Over a period of time, the receiver of the help and the attention becomes ready and able to become one of the givers. Giving is receiving. It made me think about my attitude and how come I was feeling so empty. It made me think not only about how I could put myself on the receiving end of things, especially in the context of this group, but it also made me think about how I can give, too. There are plenty of places in me that are full. Way full, and plenty that might be helpful to others in ways I will never know if I will just make myself available.

I went back home and turned on my computer to look at my email. A friend had sent me a link to a beautiful little video about gratefulness. It asked me to think about this day and everything in it as a gift. It admonished me to live from such a place of gratitude that my very presence might fill the hearts of those with whom I come in contact every day. That would be a good day, it said.

I looked out the window at the sky filled with puffy clouds, and the dark fingers of the naked trees reaching up into the watery winter sun. I thought about the fact that that one moment; the angle of light in the house, the color of the sky, brilliant sunshine magnified by the snow, the breath moving in and out of my chest, was unique. It would never happen just exactly like that again. Being present to that moment, and that possibility, truly was a gift. Life is in the details. I was being shown that even the most humble hold tremendous power.

Nothing has shifted in the list of complaints I have today. I am still in the middle of a divorce. My husband of thirty years has become an unrecognizable stranger. My children still scare me when I see the issues they are dealing with in their lives right now. I still feel mightily challenged by the health problems I am experiencing. Sometimes I feel unseen and unconnected to my larger human family, no matter what. But sometimes, like the little video suggested as I watched it, sometimes I wake up and open my eyes and feel grateful that I have eyes to open. A seemingly little shift in perception and I am blessed with the most powerful and miraculous of gifts.

The gift for me is the realization that in this moment is the one day that I have been given. In that one day is everything I could ever need or want if only I would bother to notice the details. See the story in every face you encounter and remember that in each face is the connection to a much larger, longer, and timeless series of faces, too. It makes me realize there is a higher power (that for me is God) running the show. I just need to pause long enough to pay attention, to shift my perspective even a tiny bit. It is in that shift that I find my solace and my joy. I find the mightiest of gifts. Such is gratefulness.