Gratitude as Antidote

I have thought a lot about gratitude over the past few years.  I have read books about it and listened to talks about it.  I have gone through bits and spurts of daily practices of gratitude....I have tried making it part of my morning ritual; I have incorporated it in to my writing practice; I have practiced it while walking, driving, meditating and while practicing yoga.  I often hoped for or expected this welling up; some sort of lovely emotional response connected to my practice of gratitude.  But lo, I have never felt this while "practicing."  And this inability to meet this hidden expectation sometimes stalled my gratitude practice.  But I have always come back to it; my teachers from Tara Brach to my 3 year old daughter keep reminding me that it is good for me; that perhaps above any other practice, it is the best for me; for us.

Just the other night I felt the benefit of my practice that often feels rote and unemotional, but that I plow through every day anyway.  I was up in the middle of the night, a common occurrence for me these days, and I was feeling particularly agitated and could not fall back to sleep (I am astounded by the often negative, fear-ridden quality of my thoughts in the middle of the night.)  I could feel myself trying to escape my own life, and then I got blunt with myself, "well, this is my life right now; this is the only moment that I have.  It is my choice to love it or not."  Thankfully, I chose to love it and recognized that the best way to this was through gratitude practice.  I began right away . . .I am grateful for my husband sleeping next to me; I am grateful for my sleeping children; I am grateful for the food in our refrigerator; I am grateful for our car . . . I think this is as far as I got before I fell into a sweet sleep. 

And so I have this thought: perhaps gratitude is the antidote for agitation?  Even further, perhaps it is a direct pathway from resistance to acceptance.  And perhaps too practicing gratitude is not an emotional experience but instead will allow us, through positivity and acceptance, to be open to a lovely emotional response to a direct experience of life.