I AM GRATEFUL

Page Six NY Post: Be Grateful You Are Not A-Rod or Madge...
Originally uploaded by lorenzodom

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy

I AM GRATEFUL

Cynthia Rodriguez: 'Soul-less' A-Rod Ditching Kids for Madonna on Thanksgiving

Reads the headline on Page Six of today’s edition of the unscrupulous NYPost.com.

Unlike the news roasting A-Rod and Madge this holiday, I am grateful that my ex and I continue to work things out.

Being that I have now been separated for three years and will be spending Thanksgiving with the ex and our boys at my (ex)-sister-in-law’s home again this year, I am grateful that my relationship with my wife has sustained some degree of amity and understanding and compromise, despite its ultimate demise.

I am grateful that we both agree that spending the holidays together as a faux-family is important, if only for the kids.

I am grateful that albeit we live apart, we haven’t dragged our differences into court and are doing our best to work things out our own way, without the antagonistic prod of attorneys, without the pressing need to formalize the end, without the traumatic inconveniences of splitting everything down the middle.

I am grateful that I am still invited over the in-laws house for the holidays; especially since “my side of the family” all live in California. As some of us have experienced, there is a certain magic about being “home for the holidays,” and a certain onset of depression when you are not.

I am grateful that I have an absolutely wonderful girlfriend who made a substantial effort to celebrate my very own personal holiday this year (i.e. my birthday), even though she is a resident doctor and a mother and a friend to many. Despite these demands and obligations and time-constraints, somehow she found enough time to put together a dinner party for 25 in my honor of my 41st birthday. Once again, I am grateful.

“Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” Melody Beattie

I am grateful that despite another year of my shortcomings, my shortsightedness, my faults, and my forgetfulness that I can still be forgiven and that jilted friends can still love me; and that, together, we will ring in the New Year with a clean conscience and a clearer outlook on the year to come.

I am grateful for so many incredible things: the little things that mean so much, the life-altering insights, the beauty that surrounds me, the fortune for being alive and well, the inspiration I gather daily from living in the greatest city in the world, and the many moments of glee I get from spending time with my children, my friends and my family.

And I am grateful that I am not a celebrity (yet!) who must endure the prurient watch of the tabloids that feed the less-than-discriminating masses. And thus, I am also grateful that I find my own life interesting enough that I do not waste my time enquiring into the lascivious lives of others.

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Your life here on earth is limited my friend. Make the most of it by making something of it. Don’t waste time worrying about the trespasses of the rich and the famous. Concern yourself with the abundance of wealth you already have—your friends and family, your creative spirit, your experience, your imagination and your worldly wisdom.

In uncertain times like these, it behooves us more than ever and to realize and accept that what is important is NOT what you can or cannot put under the tree or the menorah this year, but how you appreciate and express your gratitude for the daily gifts that surround you.

Thus, hopefully, my little list has inspired a little more gratitude for what you have.

Hopefully, this musing will inspire you to take stock of the all the great, priceless and intangible things you have in your life.

And hopefully, you will share that gratitude with those you love this season in ways that cannot be gift-wrapped or purchased or picked out of a mail-order catalog.

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”
William Arthur Ward

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Related Stories:
Madonna, Please Have My Baby
The End is Not The End (it is only the beginning)
Circumstances Change
Thanksgiving, 2007
Looking Back Upon 2007: A Year of Many Perfect Moments

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Other thoughts can be found at The Art of Living and Literary Central on flickr.

Check out 25 Lessons I’ve Learned (about photography) at
www.25Lessons.com

2008 HP Be Brilliant Featured Artist:
http://www.hp.com/go/bebrilliant

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