With Appreciation

Here we are: full swing into the Holiday Season in the Haliburton Highlands 2016! Yay!

So far we’ve had pancakes with Santa, crafted Christmas tree ornaments with elves, decorated sugar cookies with grandchildren and listened to truly inspiring music from remarkable young performers.  How lucky we are to live in such a generous and talented community.

There’s just so much to appreciate here.

(Ear-to-ear smile!)

There’s so much joy to express!

And then…

(Pause…breath…sigh)

…a judgement slips in: ‘I should have…if only…why didn’t I’, and the joy of the season hardens into a rock that sits in the pit of my stomach souring everything else that is good and wonderful.

Or not!

The older I get the more I realize how much control I have over my thoughts and feelings.  As the days get darker and the news get bleaker, it’s so easy to slip away from appreciation.  But, honestly, isn’t this the greatest gift there is?  To give appreciation.  To receive appreciation.  And to start with ourselves.

Recently I saw a post on Facebook from my granddaughter that grabbed my heart: “needing a lil inspiration today” with the meme “Practice knowing that you’re worthy until it becomes your entire truth, being, and mantra. – Alex Elle”  

We’ve learned from an early age how to give appreciation: to look into someone’s eyes and say thank you, or to write a note, or to give a gift, or combinations of the above.  But have we really learned how to receive appreciation?  When we hold a door open for someone, do the words of thanks flow into our hearts or do they get stuck in our ears?  When we look in the mirror with approval, does the judgement have time to melt into a smile, or is the moment quickly skipped over?  When we do the laundry, do we take a second to recognize and appreciate how we take care of ourselves and our families, or is it just another chore ticked off the list?

I started practicing appreciation in the smallest things, like completing a game of Sudoku – ‘good job Marci, amazing how you figured that out!’  Then, ‘good job body, thanks for all you did to get me through the day!’  Now everything is appreciated - maybe not in the instant - but eventually, for Nature has taught me, over and over again, to trust the path.

It’s almost like there are two operating systems in life – not PC and Mac – but Judgement and Appreciation.  (Play along with me here to get the understanding – it may be a bit of a stretch.)

Like PC, Judgement is all about logic and function and happens in the head.  It’s a ‘Goldilocks’ binary world where things are either hard or soft, hot or cold, good or bad, and the desire is for things to be in balance, to be ‘just right’. 

Like Mac, Appreciation uses as similar language but it arises within the body from a place rooted in security, passion, and courage.  This gives it a different feel - a grace, a warmth, and its desire is for harmony. 

People have been elected on the basis they’ll provide security, but it is a feeling that starts from within, that is, from within appreciation.  We may be alone in the world with nothing to our names, but if we stop and begin by appreciating our breath, syn

chronicities will click in and start to feed us.

We can reprogram ourselves, change our operating systems, many ways, including by sitting tall, eyes open, body relaxed, and filling ourselves with gratitude, love and blessings for ten minutes.  And if we repeat this ‘mediation’ a few more times daily, the body becomes more comfortable with this energy quickly.

My experience as a musician has taught me a lot about harmony.  When we bring all the instruments together and give each a voice, appreciating what they have to offer and not worrying about trying to be fair, great beauty can arise.  The timpani player with 52 bars of rest then a dynamic roll is just as important as the violinist with pages of so many notes they look like chicken scratch. 

We’re all important. We all fit in to the great symphony of life.  We have to trust in each other, trust that each of us is playing the notes on our pages the best we can. 

How interesting that on the darkest day we chose to appreciate and celebrate the light of kindness.  Both are our essence – the dark and the light. Our anger and our compassion, our greed and our generosity, and our criticisms and our empathy are constantly playing off each other, harmonizing in different modes, different styles – some pleasing, some strange. 

None are to be dismissed, all are to be appreciated as expressions of our humanity.

(Ear-to-ear smile!)

May our holiday season be filled with much giving and receiving of appreciation.