THE POSTSCRIPT, Carrie Classon
We are heading into the holiday season — already.
This year it seems like I have been running and racing and making it to places in the nick of time all year. I tend to overschedule — although I’d like to point out that my sister crams far more activities into less time than I would ever attempt.
Just when I think she couldn’t possibly do another thing, she’ll say, “I’d like to try weaving.” Weaving! That sounds like an activity I would be sentenced to do if I had committed some kind of crime.
I have zero patience for fiber arts, and I feel a little guilty about it. I made a total of one quilt, and it took me nine years. I was not, I’m happy to tell you, working on it for nine years. I bought the fabric, cut out the pieces and assembled some of them. Then I stuck them in a box and then let guilt work on me for eight-and-three-quarter years until I decided I would finally finish the quilt for a Christmas present for my mother. I did.
Someone offered to teach me to knit once, and I bought needles and red yarn. I completed a thumb, and then it was explained to me what I would have to do next. I abandoned the project in terror.
So, no. I don’t have a terribly busy life — if working on a million projects is what constitutes busy. But I’m usually working hard on something or another, and I’m usually on some kind of deadline. And honestly, I prefer it that way. I’m a person who likes to check off little boxes on a to-do list and estimate when a project will be finished and arrive at the finish line two days early.
“Hurray for me!”
There is no one who knows I had this deadline but me, and no one to join in the celebration except my long-suffering husband, Peter, but it is still a nice feeling.
But now the holidays are coming, and I am trying to remember to make time to do nothing but be grateful. Because I think being grateful actually takes more time than I used to think.
I had this idea that being grateful was a momentary pause: “Gee! This is great!” before rushing onto the next thought, the next activity, the next challenge. I am reexamining this idea.
I think what I was calling gratitude might just have been a quick identification of all the things I have to be grateful for — not really experiencing what it is to be fully grateful.
I have so much. My life is so full. I know that if I started listing off all the things that are beautiful and wonderful all around me, the sun would be setting, and I’d still be working on my list. But making a list isn’t really experiencing gratitude. Gratitude, I now think, takes a little time.
It means paying attention when I get the chance to talk with my parents. Being fully present when I take my walk on a cold afternoon. Savoring the foods I love. Listening — just listening — to the season, without always trying to make sense of it. Just feel. Just listen. Just pay attention.
This is hard for me to do sometimes. I am so programmed to make sense of everything that it is a challenge to sit still long enough to allow the season to seep into me. And be grateful.
It might be easier if I were knitting — but I’m not going to try it.
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