We Get To Choose, Plenty Or Never Enough

​We don't have much control in this life. Not in the grand scheme of things. But one thing we can almost always control is our focus.

Where will I focus my attention?

One critical choice we get to make about our focus each and every day is this: will I focus on what I have, or focus on what I lack. And if it's the latter, if I focus on what I lack, well that always begs an even deeper question - do I really lack that person, place or thing - or have I simply convinced myself I do?

Gratitude protects us from believing that more is the only way we'll ever feel whole. And yet, being forever focused on more might be what most stands in our way of ever feeling truly grateful for what we have.

Grateful isn't a gift. We don't wake up one day magically overwhelmed with a sense of appreciation for the life we have. No, gratitude is an intention. It's a skill. It's a practice.

It is a practice to look at a broken life and see I am not nearly as broken as I once was. It is a practice to look at the trail of my failures and misgivings and glean from them the wisdom that can only be gained through failures and misgivings. Did they really indeed leave me without a chance at life, or did they prepare me for opportunities otherwise impossible?

We get to choose the answer, practice it, every day.

It is a practice to write in the morning and acknowledge that I write not because I am a writer but because I have been given the gift of writing. Gratitude is often the difference between simply doing something and being blessed by the chance to do it.

And we get to choose, every day, actually practice it - am I doing or am I blessed?

We get to look at our children, each day, and decide, is my joy found in what they might one day become or in who they already are? Is my blessing found in being a great dad - or in the great gift of getting to be a dad at all?

I get to choose. Every day.

I believe most days that when all we have is all we ever wanted, we indeed have all we ever wanted.

That is not to say there is harm in wanting more. Or to suggest that everyone has enough. But life can quickly become, if we are not careful, a habit of seeing life through the lens of not enough.

Never ever enough.

And if you believe like I do, that gratitude is the quickest path to wholeness, that's a risky bad habit to fall into. An unhealthy lens.

We don't have much control in this life. Not in the grand scheme of things. But one thing we can almost always control is our focus.