Interdisciplinary Psychology:

Gratitude Letter Activity

I wrote my gratitude letter to my new very close friend Saralynn.  This assignment came at a perfect time because it forced me to reflect on who I have been grateful for in my life and in doing it, it spontaneously clicked all at once that her presence has been an indespensible teaching.  For me, she is one of those rare BRIGHT individuals whose presence naturally lights the room, without any traces of contrived effort.  It’s all pretty much here in the letter which I will share for you now:

Hey you,

So chances are you already know and sense the bulk of what I’m about to say, but there is an inherent power in verbalizing the truth, so here goes-

Saralynn, you fuckin’ rock! Seriously, though, this friendship we have has been so incredibly transformative for me—in the midst of darkness and winter—a time of year that I sometimes lose touch with myself and reality. 

But anyhow, destiny had us meet in the computer lab.  Rewind to that moment…

...I can’t help but steal at the girl sitting next to me with blond, bold, powerful dreadlocks and a radiantly warm aura.   She’s chuckling to herself as she reads her email, in such a way that I’m suddenly convinced that she’s holding the secret key to the cosmos in her corduroy purse. 

I have this strong feeling all at once that the girl is tapped into magic, and I have no choice but to introduce myself. 

To get right to the heart of the matter, You continually amaze me, heal me, touch me and best of all crack me up with your presence.  Echoing that astrologer told you, you’re a rare one in that I feel completely and totally seen and understood by you. 

Being acknowledged in such a way, I am spontaneously put back into contact with my innate wonderfulness, divinity and spunk—the foolish, hilarious child in me with a grin perma-plastered to my face.

 In short, hanging out with you, learning from you about joy, creativity and healing arts—or more accurately pestering you up for reiki and destroying your filber-butter supply, and of course the rope-swing has been far and away the best part of my quarter. 

 So I hope these words don’t inflate your ego too much, seeing as it’s my job to help you make that disappear.  But I want you to know that these thoughts have come right from the heart.

 My deepest love and appreciation,

-Adam

Reading this letter to her was simple, subtle and wonderful.  There weren’t any tears or such, but every now and then I would look up from reading and I would see here beaming at me, and there was this mutual “knowing” between us.  In one of Rumi’s poems he writes:

Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing

There is a field.

I’ll meet you there

This is the way I would characterize our friendship.  It is incredibly synchronistic, intuitive and warm—yet somehow by the grace of the universe it has remained non-sexual, which is blessing considering that sex tends to make things a lot more messy.  In thinking about the experience I’m remembering saying I heard a lot as a kid,

“The best things in life are free.”

I used to accept this teaching from adults with more then ounce of skepticism.  But as I’ve been reflecting lately on the power of close friendships, I have found myself discovering this truth first hand.  All of us we obliged to do this activity because it was assigned to us.  Yet, if we wanted to we could do this type of thing anytime at all, no cost involved, save an hour or so of reflection and writing. 

Gratitude Journal

Keeping a gratitude journal has become a wonderful new addition and outlet in my life.  Actually I started doing it a week or so before the assignment, so I have been feeling the momentum of my gratitude practice building and picking up steam. 

One of my favorite aspects of the gratitude practice is that it grounds my presence and outlook on life in a spacious and balanced perspective.  By that I mean that gratitude is such a powerful antidote to stress, sadness, anxiety or whatever the afflictive emotion de jour may be. 

          Because without the perspective of gratitude, of seeing the bigger picture- it’s really easy to get lost in that tunnel vision mindset—where all you experience is to focus on the downers, slights and curt looks you from a stranger—all of which can feel solid and permanent.

          Yet when journaling late a night, reflecting on what things great or small did go well, suddenly that dense heavy feeling in your stomach loosens up a bit.  Lately I have been finding that I my hand and the pen start to have a mind of their own.  Three blessings can’t barely begin to scratch the surface of tremendously mystery of the causes and conditions that came together to bring me into this body and this consciousness in this precious human life.  It’s a subtle but pervasive knowing, that for whatever reason, be it good karma or whatever—I am sitting on a winning Golden Ticket.  No more or less complex than that.  Feeling that gratitude in the entirety of my being as I drift off into sleep goes beyond words.