Gratitude (August 2010)

If you want a good life, be grateful. – Justin

Justin’s words ring in my ears as a most important truth in my life. As I look back, I have been grateful. However, in most cases, it was an empty gratefulness. I spent a great deal of time chasing after things, thinking this would create fulfillment. In reality, it only created a fleeting sense of fulfillment. As a top executive, businesses catered to me to get my company’s business. This meant limousines and top-of-the-line suites, including a one-week stay at the Westin Hotel in Maui.

We all experience transformative moments that carry powerful messages. For me, one of these powerful moments was at the Westin Maui. Catered to daily as a VIP, I was set up in one of their most luxurious oceanfront suites. All this attention, the setting … and I was miserable. I found myself waking at 4am, going to the lobby and talking to the parrots, wondering what I was doing. I felt empty, lost, unfulfilled. In hindsight, I was homeless, homesick for my truth. I was like a ship lost at sea, sending out an SOS (Selling Out Self). I was doing all of this for material things.

Fast-forward 15 years. I look back at those days of empty luxury as a strange dream. I have learned that to be grateful I first needed to learn how to be humble, which opened me to being teachable. And this is what allowed me to understand. It became a healthy cycle: Being grateful I became more humble. Becoming more humble allowed me to be teachable. Being more teachable allowed me to grow. And growing is the opposite of dying. I had to leave home to come home. I had to die to live.

One of the greatest gifts I’ve been given – to teach me the truth of what lies within – has been T’ai Chi Chih. It has given me a sense of truth, wholeness and peace that has allowed me to lower the noise of society and up the volume of my inner voice where truth resides. As Herman Hesse wrote, “I have ceased to question stars and books. I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.” Thank you Justin for the gratefulness TCC has instilled in me. It has changed my life and for that I will be eternally grateful. I do now have a good life.