~ I know you are there and I am very happy ~
“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.”
Gratitude
Lydia writes:
When the UK government first advised everyone who could to work from home, I decided to leave Samye Dzong to stay at my boyfriend’s. That way we’d be able to support each other and it would reduce pressure on Samye Dzong resources.
Homes, jobs, friends – COVID-19 has forced so many people to give up so many things, forced us to embrace so many new things. But especially in the first few days of lockdown my overwhelming feeling was one of gratitude. I felt so thankful to have a safe, comfortable place to be, thankful to be communicating with colleagues about the challenges we were facing at work, thankful even for the sunshine coming in through the kitchen window in the morning and the views of tender leaves sprouting from the trees outside.
Strangely, rather than feeling hemmed in by the restrictions, they made me appreciate how much I do have – my health, a kind partner, enough to eat and not least of all my meditation practice. It was as if someone had taken a highlighter pen and drawn big bright circles around all these things that I totally take for granted the rest of the time.
There are many who are experiencing greater hardship: the friend who was travelling when the lockdown happened and now doesn’t know when he’ll next be able to be with his wife; the colleagues who lost their job; people who have lost family members to the virus. And yet many I speak to voice a similar sentiment of gratitude.
I’m sure there’ll be many who’ll find it hard to feel thankful – artists’ whose livelihoods have disappeared; farmers who are having to throw out their harvest, because restaurants have stopped buying their produce; migrant workers in Delhi, for whom lockdown means hunger.
May we collectively find ways to give everyone something to feel grateful for, just like the Kagyu Mönlam office in Bodhgaya where a huge number of food parcels were prepared to help sustain locals funded from donations received.
What are you grateful for?