This post is for you if being told to practice gratitude pisses you off, even a little.
 
We’re prompted to be grateful. A lot. So many studies show that gratitude is good for us—body, mind, soul, and spirit. And self-help types aren’t shy about promoting gratitude practices.
 
Keep a gratitude journal. Keep a gratitude jar. Say prayers of gratitude. Daily is best, hourly if you can manage it.
 
This time of year, especially, it seems gratitude is all around.
 
I have a terrible secret, my friends. For me, gratitude feels like a death-dealing “should.” Gratitude feels preachy to me. Gratitude feels falsely sweet, a close cousin to denial and forced forgiveness. Gratitude makes my body tighten and harden, just a little, until I override that response because what kind of terrible person has a problem with gratitude, for god’s sake??
 
This is me. If you’re good with gratitude, rock on!
 
But if you, like me, find “gratitude” grating, I have a suggestion. Practice joy. Joy is still abstract, so let’s bring this concept down to the level of our bodies. What feels good to you? What brings you pleasure? In what do you delight?  
 
I keep a Pleasure and Delight journal, not a gratitude journal. Every night, I note what brought me pleasure that day. Sun on my face. The dinner my husband cooked. “White Lotus, Season 2.” A hot shower. The smell of our pine trees being rained on for the first time in months. A scruffy-tailed squirrel hoovering birdseed on the veranda. A conversation. A cat in my lap. That first cup of coffee. Swimming in a wilderness lake. Reading (or writing) a beautiful sentence. Snow on our mountains. Sitting on a rock with my feet in the river. The color red.
 
So many moments of joy, when I stop and pay attention.
 
Am I grateful for these things that bring joy? Of course. Does keeping this list help me pay attention to what brings pleasure and delight? Yes. I’m more apt to notice what feels good to me, and also what feels bad to me.
 
Life is complex. We are complex. We, and life, can be two things at once. Maybe more than two things at once. At heart, we are just fancy animals with bodies that relish pleasure and delight. We benefit when we don’t judge the soft animals of our bodies, but instead let them love what they love. Make your pleasure and delight a judgment-free zone.
 
This holiday season, may we notice our joy. May we let our lives be what they are, containers for both beauty and pain. May we stand with hands open, hearts present, simply being here now. May we say “Thank you!” when we notice our joy. May we say “Thank you!” when we feel our pleasure and delight.

May we savor these moments, sink our roots down into them, and grow ever more strong, resilient, and able to weather our storms: sturdy trees who joyfully shelter ourselves, our families and communities, and our world.
 
Notice what brings you joy, and do more of that. Intentionally create pleasure and delight for yourself. Savor these moments. Remember these moments. Gather these moments and feed on them.
 
My joy practice ritualizes and nourishes my connection with Earth and the Ground of Being—the Source who gives life to all things and who receives us back into herself when we die.  
 
To nourish and strengthen ourselves with pleasure and delight is a holy act.
 

I think this is
the prettiest world—so long as you don’t mind
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life
that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?
~Mary Oliver, Kingfisher

A note on Thanksgiving Day: Millions of Indigenous people died in the genocide perpetrated by White European colonists. For their descendants who remain, Thanksgiving Day is a day to remember and mourn. May we descendants of those White European colonists take seriously and reckon with this legacy. 

I live and work on the original homelands of the Wasq’ú (Wasco), and the Tana’nma (Warm Springs) people. They ceded this land to the U.S. government in the Treaty of 1855. The Numu (Paiute) people were forcibly moved to the Warm Springs Indian Reservation starting in 1879. The Klamath Trail ran north through this region to the great Celilo Falls trading grounds and the Klamath Tribes claim it as their own. Descendants of these original people are thriving members of our communities today. I acknowledge and thank the original stewards of this land.

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Photo Credit: Melissa Askew on Unsplash