I find that it is so easy to get caught up in our day to day lives and where we’re trying to go and what we’re trying to achieve that we can lose sight of what we actually have in front of us.  I feel like I’ve been doing this a lot lately.  So today I wanted to stop and pause for a moment to think about the things that I do have.  Today I am grateful.

I am grateful for the people in my life that have moved beyond friends and are now a part of my family.  My band of sisters that I have collected through life and can’t remember what life was like before they entered, because it feels as if they have always been there.  I am grateful that I have a job.  It is not the job of my dreams, nor is it a job that I ever aspired to have.  But it’s a job and it’s a job that pays all of my bills.  That is more than a lot of people can say. Heck one year ago, it was more than I could say.  For that I am grateful.

I am grateful that I have the time to put words onto the page and spin tales of life, history and the theatre.  That I have an audience for those words, no matter how big or how small and that maybe some of those words will affect someone in a positive way.  For this I am grateful.  However, today I am most grateful for some advice that I allowed myself to hear.  Upon expressing frustration that I felt as if I was simply spinning my wheels and getting nowhere fast, a friend pointed out that maybe I wasn’t spinning my wheels. Maybe I was still in the same place because I was busy building a foundation around me.  Maybe I’ve already made it to where I need to be, but I’ve been so busy running for so long that I failed to notice.  So maybe, just maybe, I need to stop running and start enjoying the build.

I truly believe that everything happens for a reason.  I am not a religious person, never have been.  My mother was, and it didn’t seem to do her much good . . . but that is a conversation for another day and that conversation will take place between me and my god.  In the meantime, my spirituality remains ambiguous, but anchored in the notion that everything happens for a reason.  People, events and experiences come into and out of our lives to serve a purpose. We may not know what that is today, or next week, or ever, but on some grand cosmic scale there is a reason.

Maybe we needed to be low so that we won’t take the highs for granted.  Maybe we needed to start over because the path that we were on was no good for us.  Maybe we encounter more obstacles in the road than most because the wisdom gained in getting over each one transforms us into the person we need to be to do our best work.  Or maybe everything is so hard because we’re so focused on an outcome instead of the journey that we’re blind to the fact that we’re scaling a wall to get to the top when there’s a set of stairs three feet to our left.

Today I choose to take the stairs, and for that I am grateful.  What are you grateful for?