Gosh. I just had the BEST piece of jam on toast for breakfast. I don’t usually have toast for breakfast but last night we discovered that there was not a scrap of food in the house so I chucked a loaf of bread in the breadmaker so the kids would have something for their school lunches today. Hot, homemade bread, toasted, with lashings of salty butter and ‘too much’ boysenberry jam from New Zealand is fucken delicious. What a way to start the day!
After last week's near double eviction (no developments to report so who knows if we’re fucked or not yet) I had a handful of kind, warm hearted people reach out and just say ‘wow’. ‘You guys could do a master class in resilience’ was probably my favourite comment and it really got me thinking. Last week was a ‘bad news’ week and I normally take this shit so seriously but this time it felt different. It’s like I somehow know that everything will be ok, and even if it isn't, that doesn’t really matter anyway.
What these YEARS of struggling, failure, poor business decisions, and bad luck have taught us is to be grateful for what we do have. The bigger the blows the more I’ve come to appreciate the smallest things in my life. The moments of pure joy in amongst the chaos.
Take for example my 6am Wednesday morning run. My running buddy and I were just about to go our separate ways and head home when we saw the outline of two other school Mum friends who were out for an early morning walk. Once we recognised them we sent out a ‘cooee’ call which received a ‘cooee’ in return. We, of course, responded with another bird call which was hit right back at us with a ‘cuckoo cuckoo’. By the time we met up there were four 40(ish) year old women doing their best bird calls, as loud as we could, on a footpath in the dark at 6.30am in the morning. The funniest part was when we all said our goodbyes and departed our separate ways, as if nothing had happened. What a hysterical way to start the day!
I’ve just finished reading Dave Grohl's autobiography ‘The Storyteller’. Now there’s a guy who knows how to practise gratitude. Despite his overwhelming success and exceptional careers his view on life is one of curious wonder. I’ve always been a massive fan of Grohl, I even did a project on him at uni for illustration, but the reason I like him most is the vibe that radiates from all that gratitude.
When people are genuinely grateful you can feel it. It brings a certain energy, an extra little tingle to the scene. In Four Thousand Weeks, Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman there is a short, rather unassuming chapter about ‘the last time’. There will be the last time for everything. The last time you go to the beach, the last time you pick your kids up because they’re getting so big, the last time you visit a loved one. Much like the Stoic idea of living each day as if it's your last, this is another way of making the most of what you have in front of you right now - in this very moment.
If you believe, even just a little, that this could be the last time then something like having a dinner out with friends all of a sudden becomes the best night ever. If it really was the last time then you’d want to savour every second, tell them how much they mean to you and just immerse yourself in the experience. Now imagine that you felt like this with all the experiences and interactions you had throughout the day. Suddenly the mundane becomes interesting. The trivial becomes meaningful. Even the pressure of life becomes a privilege.
Gratitude is thrown about quite a bit in the wellness world which is a shame because then becomes something you have to practise rather than just ‘be’. Ironically one of the things I’m most grateful for is the harrowing journey Matt and I are on. The stakes are so high and the pressure is so great. When there’s nothing left to lose (ironically the name of the Foo Fighter’s third album) there is nothing left to do but throw yourself fully into the pool of gratitude.
It’s warm in here. It's mine, no one can take it away and like endless refills, the more I splash about, the quicker it fills up again. Being grateful for what you have is the best and only advice I’d feel comfortable giving anybody. It's also infectious. It moves from you to others and people can feel it. People know when you mean it.
This week for example I was sent this awesome article about prefab building in light of the Commonwealth games cancellation. The article, by two academics from RMIT highlighted the importance for prefab building in the current housing crisis, and how off site construction is a critical part of the solution moving forward. The article was basically word for word what Matt and I talk about with every single person that walks through our door. To be honest I was quite moved by the piece so I reposted it on LinkedIN, thanking the authors for sharing their research and insights. Within 2 hours of reposting that article both authors had reached out and we’ve arranged a visit to the factory in a few weeks. Being grateful is one thing, being openly and authentically grateful opens all sorts of weird and wonderful doors.
The best moment I’ve had this week comes from Alice, who has been getting up SO fricken early. At 5am she’s up listening to music and drawing. The other day I walked into the kitchen and there was a drawing of a bum stuck to the washing machine. She’d been working on it all morning.
“Why is there a bum stuck to the washing machine Alice?”
“Because when it spins it will shake Mum!”
Brilliant. These are the moments we live for. I asked Alice if I could write about her bum drawing today and she said of course. She also wanted me to let everyone know that if you’re feeling sad then you too can draw a bum, put it on your washing machine and watch it shake. Gratitude is appreciating the bum shake. It's making the most of what you have now. So many people get stuck struggling through each day in the hopes that tomorrow will be better. What a missed opportunity to celebrate what we all have today!
