It really is an easy choice; I choose Happy ~

So, I was having a conversation with my daddy over the topic of prayers generally and the very act of praying specifically! We tend to want and want and constantly ask and ask, and ask. My dad had mentioned that he finally understood that everything that he “needed” out of life had already been given to him and that as a consequence of this, his prayers must no longer be that of asking of God to do this. . . and that .. . ; but one of absolute gratitude for that which he had already done! Hmmmm. . .; whao!!! He insisted that we just needed to slightly open our eyes in order to take the blessings in.

I will come back to this conversation later on.  I look around me with my ignorant and mundane eyes and see that I have a lot of things that needed to be done and a lot of apparent problems that needed to be solved and something else, my “to do” list happens to be as long as the Mississippi river. :-)

I then decide to take a second look and dig deeper into my whole life (in law, we call this the totality of the circumstance test):-). In order to do a really thorough analysis, you’d really need to step out of your body and look in as an outsider would.  In that moment,  I saw a healthy, well -adjusted mother of four healthy children, with a  husband to die for (I call him my very own “yori-yori”, meaning heart beat), doing a job that I love, making a difference in the lives of my clients, waking up every morning to every bone in my body and my children’s bodies still intact and rising up with me, someone who has never suffered or lived through any of the natural disaster that I see happen to people just like me on what is fast becoming a daily basis.   I pause . . . ; a really long pause and then stepped out of that outsider’s body, and a tirade of outburst like this one, “ Ogor, . . . , how dare you not be anything but extremely happy and grateful for the gifts and blessings in your life”!!!!

You know . . . ;everything in life is about perception. How you perceive something determines the level of control and power it will have over you! Our perception of a thing makes it a problem or just another curve in the road of life! Two people might be on the verge of losing their jobs or their homes and to one, even though he knows that it as a difficult situation, he chooses instead to see it  is just another curve on the road of life. He chooses instead to embrace and focus on the other gifts and blessings in his life – gift of good health, good friends who could help him out, good families who will be there for him regardless. Etc. Not only would the situation get to resolve itself, life will and often times present a way out of the treacherous situation with that kind of healthy mental attitude. Why? Because he did not let the adverse situation eat him up and destroy the only thing that he must hold on to at all cost – Hope! Because he purposefully chose to channel that adversity to a frequency of gratitude, life rises up to his frequency and presents more grateful scenarios to him!

 To another, the loss of a job or a home will mean the end of the world and the complete loss of hope. The inordinate negative energy and loss of hope channeled to this unfortunate occurrence often times begins to result in diminishing health. The more worry and hopelessness that is channeled to these events, the more the event gathers momentum and  is powered into a cycle of more negative occurrences!  Ever heard about the cliché, “when it rains, it pours”? That is exactly what happens to us when we fail to take a real perspective of events and circumstances in our lives.

Life can and does get really difficult and tough sometimes.  If it doesn't kill you, then it is meant to teach you a thing or two, and might very well be a blessing in disguise. Knowing what I know now, I will never let a seemingly tough situation weigh me down; I would rather cease that opportunity to be grateful for the blessings that have been bestowed on me! The reason it is always good to have in depth conversations with people( in this case, daddy dearest) :-)

As always, I finally understood where my daddy was headed with his theory that prayers must be all gratitude and No Seeking favors because we have already been given that which we NEED! (Keyword being “need”).

On a closing note, I ask you – “When life throws a curve at you, would you choose hopelessness and worry or would you dare look at your life and choose HAPPY because of the numerous gifts that you have already been given? I think we have a really easy choice here!

 Let’s commit to making it a habit to offer mostly prayers of gratitude and genuinely SMILE at LIFE irrespective of what our current circumstances are (because there are really a lot to smile and be grateful for) ; LIFE will in turn SMILE back at us:-)

Lovingly yours,

Ogor