© 2018 Rocco Joseph Rockinthefreeword

It’s called Gratitude…and that’s right

I have recently began writing a daily gratitude journal and wanted to reflect a moment on what lead me to wanting to do so and why exactly I am sharing this publicly with all of you.  

I have forever been longing for the type of love that I thought only occurs in fairytale and movies my entire life. Even still right now at the age of 43 years-old I am still always trying to feel,  give, and share in the phenomenon of what is called unconditional love. It took me a long time to understand what unconditional love actually means so that probably explains why I was not able to feel it. But I can say that for myself over this past year with much humbling and searching I was able to find it through what I was already thankful for. It gives me that “I am good enough” warm and rewarding feeling inside. So today I look to find three things I am thankful to already have as opposed to focusing on what it is that as of now, I do not.

I can’t go on feeling this way!

What are these damn emotions and why do I always have to feel them? It’s lunacy! They hurt me one minute and then make me better the next! I love to feel emotions that make me feel so alive when inspired and full of compassion and other days I feel they are trying to kill me through empathy and deep loneliness. Love/Hate! Lose/win. F###ed either way when you can’t help but to feel the emotions as they occur through the day. Like living in bipolarity with my own emotions. Sounds like insanity, right?! Maybe it could lead to that, but only if I continued to live that way once I became aware of it and expect to see different results without ever-changing anything about myself. So that’s another one of the reasons I am happy when I can start my day or end my night finding the time to reflect on things that I am grateful for. Personally it allows me to spread positive seeds anywhere I may have an influence upon in my own environment while planting those same seeds inside of myself to grow and sustain me, if you will, at times when I will need them to help enrich my future. It has helped me begin to continue and start moving again after I had stopped sometime ago. It was after I had reached the point of not being able to participate completely in the insane pattern of what was my life that was taking me absolutely no where. Full circle after full circle for God only knows how long or how many times like one endless spiral. 

Hopelessness is probably the best word I can use to describe how this process felt to me once I became aware of my life. To see why I became the person that I am. It was there that I was so blindly led by my suffering into a pit of hopelessness and despair, but somewhere beyond the darkness I saw a light that showed me exactly who I am. I did not like that person so much. I saw someone who always longed to live a brave and moral life but was nothing more than a hypocrite at best. I was someone who criticized all that was wrong in the world while blaming and accusing God of hating me and turning me into who I had become. And nonetheless I was doing so from inside the safety and shelter of walls I built up around me. It was easy for me to become very hypocritical of others from behind there. You see, I felt that I knew better than God or anyone else, what was wrong and what needed fixing in the world. So I would sit around and condemn the stupidity I saw in everyone else in the world while not aware of the huge grudge or chip on my shoulder it was creating. So yeah, I got knocked the f### down from that high-horse I rode on. Knocked me down hard in a way that humbled me. Humbled me in a way that I so very much-needed. To see how small I am in all of this but also how big of a part of all of this I am at same time. With this new-found knowledge I discovered in me came this new feeling that I can not help but to feel and express on a daily basis that is called gratitude! I am so grateful and blessed to be alive and to experience how miraculous and beautiful this life of limitless possibilities actually is.

For this, I am forever grateful!

How about you? Anyone else grateful to be living in such a wonderful world?                 Let me know through the comments below.

Thanks for listening. Love & Light Always!