How Thanksgiving can EXPAND from One Day to Much More or How my Toilet went from Stupid to Stupendous in one Moment

Happy Thanksgiving.

What? No, I'm neither hallucinating nor tardy. I'm aware that it is not November.

In some cultures there is one day per year set aside to give thanks and honor the gifts that fill our lives. In other traditions this practice expands to each day, and for some this offering of gratitude for blessings is a constant practice.

The practice of gratitude may not enhance our product-selling economy or media; seemingly a large segment of our culture. The media presents us with a picture of scarcity. In the one hour I spent viewing Rudolph this month I was given messages that I'm not enough. The advertisers had some very handy fixes to my ineptitudes. It was implied that I need a product to make me thinner and prettier, and that I need a drug to quell my feelings of awkwardness in social situations. How would I measure my inadequacies in these areas anyway? When would I be attractive, healthy or socially secure enough?

But I am enough.

Let's consider just one ten minute snapshot of one of my days. Why not? I have six of these segments per hour, 24/7. Let's consider the moment I depart from my home to work at my local friendly yoga studio. My miraculously synchronistic functional body arrives in my vehicle. I drive an incredible machine whose function I understand approximately 10%. It is a machine that I've not only take for granted, but, boy can I grumble when it isn't running at 100%. And if I'm not able to drive that car at the arbitrary speed listed roadside, I could easily prompt a whole room filled with people to back me on how frustrating that is. In fact I've done it before. I arrived to teach a few minutes late, which was several minute after my desired "be very prompt and prepared" self. All I needed to do was mention to my friends the road on which I was "delayed." A mutual grouse time ensued.

The next time my mind begins this spiral I vow to thank my brothers and sisters who invented my vehicle. I'm so grateful to those people who designed it, those who created, assembled, painted, inspected, and delivered it. Nerd alert: I can even geekily be thankful for the person who designed my car's seat in which I practice my seated alignment series. Breathing the same air as all those people is ME. I send thanks to the responsible abundantly fortunate ME who washes this car, fills it with gas, listens for weird noises, and hires another to remove some perfectly viscous liquid and insert another.

After all of this thanking, I'll still be a little late to my destination, but instead of using energy talking about the very valid reason I have to self-righteously be regarded as that "very prompt and prepared" self, I now enter the space nearly overwhelmed with gratitude. How blessed I am to know that the people who are so patiently waiting for me didn't notice I was late. Each grace-filled yogi is deep in the practice of sending thanks to the person who built the former flour mill's floor upon which she is sitting. He is much obliged to the person who designed the mill, much indebted to the trees that grew for years to create the strong beams, amazing walls, floors, and very carefully planned, excavated and positioned foundation. Blessings to the people who updated this structure for years.

Mad props to the person who installed indoor plumbing. Thanks to the whole team who invented that toilet. I don't even know how the water gets pulled down that drain. This was invented long before Dyson! How many times EACH DAY have I taken your racing speed straight-to-the-basement-and-out-to-the-street-efficiency for granted?

I now spend time giving extra thanks to people and situations that challenge my patience. "Thank you dear sweet automobile for doing my bidding up until this one day when my brother had the audacity to drive 10 a full ten miles per hour fewer than the number I just saw posted on the side of the road. Did he not see it? I even gestured toward it to it as he crawled past."

"Thank you clogged toilet. Before this present moment I'd become accustomed to your amazing capacity to whirl my waste out of my house."

Work on this gratitude practice. The mass media may not support it since no business directly profits from it. BUT the media will gladly sell you this fresh new and improved commode and this BRAND NEW CAR!

Make the verbiage of thankfulness a habit to see from your new lens. Be a shape shifter. Seek those who help you to develop that practice. Surround yourself with these people and that circle will expand. The energy we spend marveling at the miraculous gift of our own body, the numerous wonders, and vast universe could expand to fill all of our time. How contented our experience can be.

On so many levels I'm participating in thanks giving for you, brothers and sisters, all year long.

Namaste, Loretta Zedella