Gratitude is always simple, but some days it’s just so easy. It helps when the temperature has finally dropped below 100 so you can stop using the frozen bananas in your freezer as back up ice cubes. Money has been tight this summer. I opened the fridge this morning to some slightly dried out black beans and half a zucchini. I considered eggs, but we were out of those as well. The almond milk that renders oatmeal palatable (with cardamom and honey) was sitting empty on the counter. It’s not so dire that we don't have money for food, but stocking up every market visit and indulging in an emergency jar of almond butter (why must it be so expensive?) hasn’t been in practice as of late. Distraction visits to the fridge have been a little disappointing.
I looked around and noticed a ripe plantain left on top of the fridge and an avocado that oddly hadn’t interested me the last couple days. A delicious breakfast took shape. I sliced the plantain into strips and placed them in a pan with coconut oil, cut the avocado in half to wait on my plate and added a little water to moisten the beans already seasoned with capsicum, sea salt and some powdered nettle (tasteless, but good for the anti-inflammatory and immune boosting properties). I made a cup of coffee from a packet of beans left over from my spring trip to Panama. It’s lost a bit of potency, but I dip into it when I want to tap into the feeling of being on that land. I brought everything out into the sun, realizing I’d just made a delicious breakfast from the simplicity of what most might see as a few sad leftover ingredients.
Maybe this kind of thing doesn’t come easily to everyone, but with the right spices and one good quality oil, you can usually make something delicious out of almost nothing. Probably a hold-over from living in a lot of places where stocking up on food was either logistically, financially, or geographically inconvenient. I took a second to enjoy the sight of my spontaneous Central American breakfast and felt the sun on my legs while breathing in a sip of coffee.
Some drinks I love just because of the association. So much of the pleasure derived from food is actually about the association- which is why most consumption habits can be so challenging to break. Occasionally, I crave white wine on warm sunny days because in my head it always looks like light shining through a frosted glass between two laughing friends sharing lunch out on a beautiful day. I’m in love with coffee and a good meal in the sun because it takes me back over the enjoyment of every brunch I’ve ever had. I don’t know if this happens to other people, but I constantly have a reel of past moments moving through my mind. Maybe they’re trying to tell me something in the now, or maybe the sensory pathways of my memory are just particularly strongly wired. The simplest sip of coffee today, and I’m back in Magnolia, a basement restaurant in Burlington, Vermont that on my last trip to America I discovered had closed at some point over the eight years I hadn’t been there. It's been so long, yet I'm so quickly transported- sitting next to a pillar of exposed brick with the joy of vegan sausage and Vermont cheddar (in those happy days when I still ate cheese) in my scrambled eggs. The coziness of my sweater against early fall air outside, sitting across from someone I was in love with.
This is also one of the beautiful things about gratitude- it stirs up all the other times and moments we were so grateful.
Back then, it was being off work and able to take this weekend trip, the calm of the body after a couple nights falling asleep to the sound of the lake against the rocks, the days walking through hemlocks and pines, and the leftover peace of a few orgasms coursing through the cells. Did I think I didn’t have enough money to do what I wanted or be free from some stupid job back then? Yes. Do I feel that way now? Yes. Has any of that stopped me from being able to experience the most amazing people, bright moments, and delicious coffees replete with every joyful coffee memory of my life? No. And in that we can take comfort in knowing that will also be the case going forward. There is no lack in gratitude. Not even when we think we only have this small thing to be grateful for at this particular moment. Because within this moment is held the comfort and proof that this feeling and expansion of love for everything we are experiencing is always available. Simply from noticing and choosing that feeling.
We are taught to discount the simple. Maybe that’s because someone is afraid we will stop our striving if we notice how much good is already around us. But the desire for evolution- which happens naturally and doesn’t require the force carried in a word like strive- is an innate human quality. So there’s no threat in reveling in the simple. I can’t stress enough the importance of noticing pleasures like air on your skin. Seeing light filtering sparks through a glass of water. The fullness we can feel with a deep breath of air in our lungs because this is always available to us. There are people that don’t actually have this available to them, so if you do, acknowledge it. If we can already enjoy and appreciate on this level of simplicity then there will always be more, and our days can feel full of abundance.
I made a suggestion to someone recently to take pleasure in the minutiae of the day and make that tiny moment their version of prayer. I’m not a prayer person. I’m coming to learn more about its power and benefits, but I'd always been deterred because of the religiosity of it- asking for random things and protection, as though everything was out of our hands and we had to hope that maybe something existed to hear it and do something about it. As we see with so many things in life, many of the systems, tools and modalities available to us are all variations of the same thing designed for the different types of people we are. I believe in turning whichever act or tool brings you to this place of reassurance into your version of prayer.
I heard once that prayer is when we tell the Universe what we want, and meditation is when we receive information from the Universe. I think it it can be a two in one (Flashbacks to Pert Plus 2 in 1 shampoo and conditioner in the small tiled shower at my grandmother’s- getting yelled at for not washing behind my ears when, in fact, I had washed behind them... what the hell was back there?). Within the gratitude, we are asking for and generating the feeling we want to feel. This goes out around us, and we automatically receive the instructions for creating more of this feeling- noticing the other things around us deserving of our appreciation in a day. I make a delicious nurturing meal and memory series out of three forgotten ingredients in my kitchen, take the moment to receive how good this feels, and I’m gifted all the understanding and energy I need for creating this feeling over and over.
What simple things in a day spark this experience for you? What is your version of coffee in the sun?