A Blessed Man in the Dark
I usually wake up early, commonly 4AM, when it’s still dark, and I like to keep the world at bay for a while and stay inside a quiet bubble when I write and make coffee. I use this little two dollar flashlight to illuminate everything for as long as possible. Hopefully, while sunlight slowly returns I can gradually make the transition into day without artificial light, which isn’t always possible, especially as we head into the fall season.
I was thinking earlier that my habit reminded me of some character in literature, whom I finally remembered was Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Dickens wrote that “Darkness was cheap and Scrooge liked it.” The old miser son of a bitch preferred to walk up a wide flight of stairs in the dark rather than waste money on a candle to light the way and he was stingy with coal as well.
I would amend the quote to “Darkness was calm and the GratiDude liked it.” I don’t do this because it’s cheap, I do it for my inner peace and how it helps me concentrate on the business at hand which is this Inquiry Into A Gratitude-Inspired Life.
There are certainly days when I take for granted the convenience of electricity and hot showers and having keys to one’s own digs and a working vehicle and generally good health and plenty of food and people you love and ambient sunlight and the uplift and excitement of commerce all around and laughter and new ideas and the change of seasons and having coffee by a rainstreaked window in a cafe or the freedom to vote or observing the subtle turn of a beautiful ankle or surviving a potentially lethal accident or any of a million possible experiences. It is a world so full of a number of things, as Robert Louis Stevenson opined.
Right now I am just really grateful for this mug of hot matcha that I can hold goblet style and warm both of my hands on a morning hard by the equinox. It’s a simple pleasure, like so many of the best ones are, and I’m happy to think of it, in this moment, while the steam is fogging my glasses and I have my eyes closed in the dark and am savoring the aroma. That seems like a grace, an unmerited favor, to have it come up unbidden like this. To be aware and then to give it voice. Two byproducts of a gratitude practice, whether the object is hot tea on a cold morning or being aware, in the moment, when you’re in the shower and grateful for what the simple plumbing and the turn of a knob can bring and how not everyone has what you have. Even if they did, it’s still gasp-worthy, like the ability to breathe, which everyone also has.
And right now there’s a sparrow on the roof ridge of the neighbor’s house, backlit by the eastern dawn, and a lone contrail up beyond that and there’s the purple uproar of the morning glories out back and the Rose of Sharon still flowing and flowering and showering us with lavender gifts. I’m a blessed man, I can see that.
