Please to be kicking in now, iced espresso... with some words of gratitude.

Tuesday morning. Almost as bad as Monday morning, right? It's still the beginning of the week, so you can't call it hump day or anything like that. The only saving grace for a Tuesday is iced espresso... my new best friend.

But then, here I sit, waiting faithfully for it to take effect, while I type incoherently about Tuesdays and their lack of merit, and I could be doing something more virtuous. Like what, you ask? Like listing the things I'm grateful for. They say to do that because it puts your life into perspective. So, I'm going to try it.

~This life. Granted, it's fricking bloody hard a lot of the time, but it's also a blessing to be self-aware, and, I guess fundamentally, to be allowed this human form. For me, our ever-evolving consciousness is ample evidence of a shared universal energy that connects us all, soul to soul.

~Hope. Actually, I survived on hope as a kid. I remember comforting myself with this instinctive understanding that everything in future would be grand, that I only had to wait out the painful stuff patiently because then my life would start. For that reason, I think I lived more in my head than out of it. Hope kept me sane. Now, I still cling to hope in so many ways, but more to drop-kick failure when it tries to wear me down.

~The ability to love hard. Sometimes, when I'm particularly disgruntled, it feels like it would be easier if this particular trait would just back the hell off a little. But in the end, I'm praying that a passionate nature will pan out. I don't understand coldness. It scares me when people don't feel for each other. If you can look at someone who is suffering and hurting, and you aren't affected because you don't know them, then I'm thoroughly wary of you. (And that's about as judgmental as I get.)

~Individuality. I'm grateful for all our differences. I'm grateful that this world is so completely diversely painted in both its landscape and its inhabitants. Now, if only we could all bring ourselves to appreciate and treasure these differences rather than fear them, we'd be in much better shape.

By the way, in spite of the bad stuff, I think humanity is changing for the better. I think our minds are expanding and at record speed, and that may be WHY there's so much of a scramble to hold on to old ways of thinking. Here's to that hope I mentioned above. It's suggesting that we may enter a time of enlightenment after all.

Peace out,
Jen