Good morning everyone,

Here's something I have been meaning to talk to you about for ages, it's the idea of microgratitude. Being grateful is something that we are told to do and told it's good for us, but when things are bad and you try to be grateful, you often think about big things that, instead of being comforting/centering/whatever, remind you of problems in other areas of your life and leave you feeling like gratitude "isn't working". That's where microgratitude comes in, it's about noticing and enjoying tiny things that you see and do every day. Here are some examples:

• A cat executes a perfect leap from one wall to the next.
• A small child on the train is talking to their parent in English, but the parent answers in another language. The conversation continues in this way a full five stops.
• You look at the clock and it says 12:34.
• A crow interrupts eating from a crisp packet to stare at you in a threatening way, as though you might at any point swoop in and take the crisps away from him.
• The credit cards on the table at the end of a meal out form a pleasing range of harmonising or contrasting colours.

Obviously this is not a panacea, but well worth a shot if you are feeling a bit glum. It's why I'm so chipper so much of the time anyway. Here's Kylie Taylor talking about her career and her own microgratitudes:

I was going through an intensely difficult period in my personal life and thought I would never survive it. I was trying to cope in various ways, when a friend said to me that I just had to focus on taking baby steps - one tiny step at a time… Small, little victories, micro reasons for gratitude, such as getting out of bed, or making a piece of toast, putting one foot in front of the other. I felt like I was failing myself and losing my mind, but this conversation changed my whole outlook and I truly think, saved my life.

https://thewomensorganisation.blogspot.com/2020/03/stand-out-promoting-women-role-models.html

Toast is great.

Now let's enjoy this extract of a Jane Kenyon poems together:

from At a Motel Near O'Hare Airport

Here comes a 747,

slower than the rest,

phenomenal; like some huge

basketball player

clearing space for himself

under the basket.

How wonderful to be that big

and to fly through the air,

and to make so great a shadow

in the parking lot of a motel.

Wondering what it must be like to be an aeroplane is very aligned with the sort of thing I am talking about. How about a bit more on Jane Kenyon:

“The poet here sears a housewife’s apron, hangs wash on the line, walks a family dog and draws her thought from a melancholy, ecstatic soul as if from the common well, ‘where the fearful and rash alike must come for water.’ In ecstasy,” Muske continued, Kenyon “sees this world as a kind of threshold through which we enter God’s wonder.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jane-kenyon

Finally, here's kind of a microgratitude anthem; it's Julien Baker's Rejoice. Maybe you have heard it before, however I recommend that you listen to this utterly beautiful rendition at your earliest convenience:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C_UYJKoALs

Love,

Alex.