She wasn’t looking for love, let alone a prince, she just wanted a chance to get out of her work clothes and wear something lovely and go to the party…Cinderella has always been one of my favorite Disney movies, and truth be told, many times I have “blamed” some of these fairy tales of my youth for my occasional confusion about this ‘happily ever after’ business…  That she escapes in time to try on the shoe, and that it fits, oh my!!…the joy and excitement it brings out in me, still…she’s been working so hard, she is so kind and so loving…she deserves this…well, let’s just say to this day I get excited when her foot so elegantly slips into that glass shoe…

Last summer, eleven months ago today actually, I was not looking for love and did not expect to meet a prince,  I just wanted a chance to get out of my work clothes and wear something lovely and have some fun. I wanted to meet new people and see new things.  I wanted nothing more and had no expectations.  That I unexpectedly met a person as beautiful on the outside as he is on the inside was quite a fortuitous event.

My desire for a happy life in love notwithstanding, I had been “suffering” with a gratitude attitude problem for months…(can I call it ‘suffering’ if it is self-inflicted and purposeful…I’m thinking, no.)   This is not new to me, this inability, or really this resistance to accepting and appreciating all the good in my life: I am not unable to, I seem to choose, all too often, this twisty rut-filled muddy path rather than the manicured and trimmed and nicely edged with pavers path.  I am well aware, and have honestly always been, that I ought to simply be appreciative of all the wonderful, and to cease even recognizing, let alone contemplating, any of the not wonderful, and truth be told, there is and has always been, very little of the not so wonderful…

I get into such an internal rage sometimes that I am sure I could explode somebody’s head with my thoughts…I get into such an emotional funk sometimes that I just want to sit in the dark in my yard and deeply wish that the nearest human was miles and miles away…I get into such a teeth grinding eye rolling irritability that I say things in haste and then regret them.   A couple of weeks ago I worked alone for nine hours, there were no working exterior outlets for my ipod so I had music for only a couple of hours of battery life, and I can tell you, five hours with just the thoughts in my brain is not the best company…but, my thoughts began to change…

I started to not only realize, but to accept, that the WAY that I think and what I think about was and is infiltrating every aspect of my existence.  I started to force myself to stop the thoughts when they turned envious or ugly and to rethink the thoughts with a twist to the positive, to the optimistic.  And you know what?  Right!  It has started to sink in, deeply and thoroughly, and has made all the days of the last couple weeks better, and every day my thoughts seem to be better than they were the day before.  It’s working.

I’ve been told by a few people of my past that I had a “problem” that my problem of being unable to be -PRESENT- was my problem…nothing else was wrong or bad in my life, but my inability to think rightly.  It’s a gift, I have finally learned, and am learning to give myself, it is the best present, learning to be present.  Contentment with all that is good and all that is now is something precious.  I always knew this, I just could not seem to BE this.  I’ve ready plenty of books telling me, “it will work” but I suppose, like every living thing, it has to evolve on it’s own time to get to it’s full potential.  Early last weekend, I became teary eyed watching television; seeing the suffering people in a small town in Oklahoma sort through tons of debris that once was their lives, while I was sitting on my extremely comfortable Crate & Barrel sofa in my dream house…and then a short story of a family with five children, all of whom need heart transplants, suffering with worry…and I realized I was tearing up, with this odd mix of sadness and happiness.  So sad for those who have so much trouble and so happy for the life I am living, right here, right now.  I felt so much gratitude, like it was oozing through my veins…

It was a beautiful feeling, and a strange sensation…I realized I was becoming, finally, mindful.  I was perhaps starting to grok the concept of ‘isness.’  I did not need three fairy godmothers and no magic wands were involved, nobody had to sing Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo to me.  I was just hanging out on the sofa with a boy who loves me.  I started reflecting upon how lucky I feel that I feel more “me” (the good me, the true me, the authentic me) with this person than I have ever felt with anybody.  That together we share these three beautiful little girls, none of which are mine, and that they are smart and clever and funny and healthy.   That we have all that we really need and most everything that we really want. On Sunday I decided to give myself a gift of being totally present and doing only what I wanted to do, not anything that I had to do.  I took a short nap in the sun, I read a book, I listened to music, I walked around the yard and rather than look at a single weed that I chose not to pull, I looked at all the buds, the new bright green growth, the intense colors of the flowers that are already out, our veggie garden that is already double in size, the strawberries in the galvanized tub that were just hours away from turning their true full color…and I felt content in a way that I truly had not felt in a very long time, perhaps ever.  I felt a bit like all those strawberries, just being, patiently growing until it is the exact right time for them to ripen…