Good Morning!

Gratitude Without Demand

 

Good morning.

I’m writing this on a spectacular morning at the dawn of winter. The sky is blue, a few white clouds drifting by, and the weather is gentle for the week before Thanksgiving. It reminded me that Trungpa Rinpoche used to begin many of his talks, no matter the hour, with Good morning. Even at 11pm, with people possibly  waiting for hours, he’d beg with “Good Morning”. The point was simple: meditation offers a fresh start. A neurological reboot. It doesn’t solve our problems, but it does give our system a moment to soften, refresh, and reset—like refreshing your computer.

Every time we return to the breath in meditation, we are rebooting. Coming back from the intriguing of our thinking, saying good morning to yourself, especially with a small smile, has a real neurological effect. We tend to believe difficult times require huge remedies. When life becomes extreme, we assume our response must be equally extreme. Psychologically, socially, culturally, this is a trap. In daily life that strategy is exhausting. Defensive systems take enormous energy to build and maintain, and they always generate blowback. Aggression breeds aggression. Many of us inherited defensive habits from family dynamics, even generations of them. We are born into lineages of fear and resentment.

It’s up to us if we choose to continue this. A sane antidote is is to interrupt the stream of aggression, by interrupting our thoughts.  Interrupt not uproot. We may benefit from knowing the history of our trauma but intermittently interrupting the flow of suffering may be more profound than we know. It’s certainly easier. All it takes is remembering. And the willingness to train to remember. Which is what meditation is. Just learning to remember to come back.

Good morning.

Said with a real, gentle smile, it can open the smallest gap in the wall-to-wall urgency of life. Rebooting means we can lay down, even briefly, the baggage of defensiveness, doubt, weariness, confusion, complaint.

Writing this on the eve of Thanksgiving and the dawning of winter, I’m reminded of both gratitude and harvest. We reap the goodness we’ve sown and offer it to family and friends. That offering draws us toward the long night ahead, lighting it with appreciation. Gratitude has a genuine neurological impact. In darkness, a single light matters. Instead of dwelling on cold, scarcity, or whatever “toxicity” is in our cupboard, we can choose to feel grateful simply for another day—another chance to live.

This doesn’t make everything easy or abundant. It simply gives us a moment of respite. Good morning, with a smile. In meditation, every return to the breath is a quiet declaration: I’m grateful for this moment. I’m here. With each return, we loosen the grip of our thinking and open ourselves to fresh possibility.

Simple acts of kindness—especially those with no expectation—recharge us. A smile doesn’t need to be worn all day; that would look odd and take too much effort. But an inner smile, a small encouragement toward ourselves, goes a long way. Good morning. A new moment. A simple acceptance of where we are.

Today, at the dawn of winter and just days from Thanksgiving, I am grateful for all of you. I am grateful for anyone who reads this, for anyone who’s benefited from any work I’ve done, because it means the teachings have moved somewhere. I’m grateful for my practice and training, for the ability to return—again and again—to this moment, offering myself kindness with no expectation that it changes a single thing and no demand that we reap what we want to sow.

When we notice, we see how amazing nature growing around us is – how miraculous, how alive. When we smile with gratitude we are joining the world of the living. That’s all we need to do. It’s simple. Trees don’t ask for applause. Birds building nests don’t need approval. Blades of grass pushing through concrete don’t need anything other than soil and sunlight.

Good morning.

With all the demands we place on our life, moving out of our house, getting our teenagers to love us, finding meaningful work, finding a lover who meets our endless list of demands, maybe we can just look with softer eyes and smile in gratitude for the moments that lie between all of these things. We can be grateful for things, of course. But we can just smile just because we’re alive and part of the life around us.

We seek happiness, always. And we have so many ideas of what that means. However, ideas become expectations and expectations become demands. All of this sets ourselves up for disappointment when we fail to get what we think we want, or further expectation when we succeed. This is all so very complicated. Perhaps this is why Chogyam Trungpa made a distinction between happiness and cheering up. Simply said, happiness requires effort and often carries baggage. Happiness also demands freedom for struggle or pain. But cheering up is simple. Smiling in the face of pain, smiling despite our struggle, smiling just for a moment to lighten the load.

That simple neuro-hack won’t change everything.  It may change nothing at all other than that moment.  But life is only moments. So, we are adding sunlight in small increments. That may offer enough release to open our life altogether. Good morning.

And thank you.