An attitude of gratitude makes the space for grace

November 3, 2020

Dear diary,

I got pretty sick this afternoon. That’s always been one thing about this body, if you push it, it will push back. Some of it may be mast cell related, some of it may be kidney related (some of my kidney numbers are not good currently).

Ended up sleeping from noon until 5pm. I have the heat turned up now, drinking warm fluids, and wearing a heavy shirt. When I laid down earlier I started having chest pain, so I took some Benadryl and that eventually went away, but then I slept.

Prior to sleeping, and while I was still having some intermittent chest pain — and the point of writing this — I thought, “Whoever controls things here on Earth, on this physical plane (a God or gods), if there is some entity that controls things, THANK YOU for the time I’ve had here. Thank you for letting me see all that I’ve seen, and for meeting the people (and animals) I’ve spent my life with. I’m really happy with that, I think I met all the right ones, a lot of really good people.”

After that I thought, “And thank you for giving me this body. I don’t know why you gave me this particular body, how that selection process works, but thank you for giving me one where I could have all of these special effects at night and during meditation. I didn’t succeed in doing more with those, and that’s my biggest regret, but thank you for giving me a very different life, view of the world, view of life and death, and perspective.”

One thing about this body is that I didn’t like it very much in high school. I didn’t know anything about nutrition back then, but it seemed like whatever I did, I just could not lose weight, and I was always heavier than most of the other kids. But now I thought, if this is the end, I really do have to thank you, because for some reason, I have easily experienced things that none of my friends do — different states of mind — and I appreciate that.

All of that reminded me of something my yoga instructor and another person I met later both said: “An attitude of gratitude makes the space for grace.”