Thank You For Everything

Transcript

Let’s talk about thank you for everything, alright?

A couple of weeks ago, seated in meditation I finished a meditation after 20 minutes that I was sitting. As I often do I said a little prayer to conclude the session.

I started saying thank you, thank you for the good times and the bad times. Thank you for the pleasure, enjoyment, happiness, the experience.

Thank you for the sadness, the melancholy for the pain for the suffering.

Thank you for everything and thank you.

I can start saying thank you for the suffering because in many ways when I suffer I later learn how to not suffer or I later learn wisdom.

I am grateful again for my own discernment, I am grateful again for my will to apply my discernment.

Before those moments of sorrow and suffering what if I’m not only grateful for what they give me, what if I’m also grateful for those experiences of themselves in those moments. Even as I’m experiencing them, even as I’m experiencing the pain of being not what I hoped to be.

There’s this episode of South Park where people like to share this gif of Butters when a woman or young girl has broken up with him.

Butters is distraught, he’s suffering. He’s heartbroken and depressed, probably several emotions at once and he says “I like life”

And the other kids say “What do you mean you like life? You should be miserable. You just had this awful thing happen to you. This girl broke your heart in a devastating way.”

And he was like “Oh yes, I am miserable. I like the fact that life gives me the chance to experience these things.”

Or the other famous scene is from almost famous where the main character this aspiring journalist is sitting in an airport trying to make his way home and he happens to run into his estranged sister who is an air stewardess.

And she says to him “Wow, it’s so great that you’re out here.” And hes confused after again having romantic problems and problems with his friendships.

She says “I see that you’re sad, that you’re suffering but it’s wonderful that you’re out here living life. You’re really living.”

People say its easy for a ship to stay in good condition when it’s at port. But that is not what ships are made for and so when we’re out there really living, if we really push life to the limits….of course we’re going to have vast experiences.

Some of them enjoyable and some of them painful and maybe just maybe we can be grateful for all of them. We can enjoy even that which on the surface seems not enjoyable.

My friend Anam Paiseanta said to me one thing he learned from meditation is that he has preferences. But they are just preferences. One thing happens and another thing happens in his life and yes he prefers some of them to others but they are merely preferences.

It’s like sometimes you go to the ice cream store and you order mint chocolate but they make a mistake and give you choc chip instead.

Not my favorite, but I’ll make the best of it anyway.

From Abraham Hicks this special phrase “Whatever happens make the best of it.”

Make the best of it. Whatever happens, make the best of it.

So thank you for everything, thank you for the sorrow, for the happiness, the peace, the violence, the intensity and the subtlety. Thank you for everything and that’s all I have to say.