Summit Wellness: Gratitude - "The Ghost of Christmas Past"
Wellness can be achieved by virtue of completing a journey and maintain a lifestyle. But it can also be magnified by our ability to appreciate and be thankful for the things that we already have! Summit Wellness continues to hum the melody of connection between feeling good and feeling grateful!
Gratitude is a monthly feature contributed by Matt Anthony, Digital Media Producer and on-air host for the Summit FM. Matt reflects on instances where we might uncover more ways to appreciate what’s in front of us, and how those instances might contribute to our overall health and well-being.
Do you like music?
Does it give you a lift?
Then look in the closet
for your Christmas gift.
When I was 9 years old, a small box was given to me on Christmas morning. Sitting around me were all my siblings, as well as my parents. The size of this box was alarming to my adolescent sensibilities. How could my parents fit a bicycle or a football in a box this small, I thought.
But the above poem was on a multi-colored strip of paper, richly adorned with my mother’s creative calligraphy. It intrigued me, so over to the closet I walked. There, I discovered an acoustic guitar. It would be the gift that would change my life.
In a perfect world, I would share a poignant story with you, about how I spent hours learning this instrument. That I stayed in the attic working on chord-progressions until blisters formed on my fingers. That I formed a band in my teens, worked my way into other music projects that eventually got me noticed as a budding guitarist, and blossomed into a sought-after session-musician.
But it’s not the case.
The truth is I barely touched it. While I liked music, I didn’t enjoy the hard work necessary. And ‘practicing’ got in the way of what was really important to me then: learning to hit the curveball. I was enamored with baseball, and being a catcher, like my father, was my first love.
This gift, though, given to me by my mother and shunned early on has, in a way, become a sort of benchmark for me. It is a source of regret, of wonder, and, every Holiday season, an invitation to re-examine my life. How did that small slip of paper wrapped inside a small box become something that I would actually be grateful for?
I ponder this missed opportunity almost every time I pick up a guitar. Sure, I tinker around with a few chords now and then, but invariably as I work my way from ‘Em’ to ‘C’ to ‘D’ and back to ‘G,’ I experience both loss and wonder. What could have been? Where could I have gone? My mother picked the perfect gift, and I, essentially, discarded it. Am I taking advantage of the opportunities given to me now? Today?
Or am I merely mired in ‘regret’?
Being on this Alzheimer’s journey with Donna has been enlightening, to say the least. And this year, adding in her cancer-diagnosis, has certainly compounded things. But it’s also taught me the need to be grateful for the microscopic moments. The ‘now’ is all we have. I can do nothing about that succinct 4-line poem from all those years ago. And the events that unfold down the road hold no weight as of yet.
I wanna laugh while the laughin' is easy
I wanna cry if makes it worthwhile
I may never pass this way again
“We May Never Pass This Way (Again)” - Seals and Crofts
This season I’m going to do my best, at least for a day, to leave the closet door closed. I’m going to send the ‘regret’ on hiatus. I’m going to turn down the commercialism and the Holiday noise and find a moment of thankfulness and gratitude for the things I do have. Here’s hoping your Holidays also create a small space for relaxation and peace.