In the spirit of the new year, the idea of a gratitude jar (making the rounds on FaceBook) caught my eye. Good things, blessings, happy moments — these things are written on pieces of paper and stored in a jar. At the end of the year, one can open the jar, revisit the moments and count one’s blessings. Literally.
I love it!
I chose a translucent jar, so that I could see the blessings grow. (Besides, I found it on clearance for $3.50.)
But I’m a yin yang kind of a girl, so I thought I would round out the concept with another jar. You know, for the icky stuff. It’s sort of a psychological exercise, and it’s not a bad thing at all, once I thought it through a bit. The idea is to write down the things that make me frown, cause me stress or anguish, and put them in the jar. I chose an opaque jar with a narrow neck, so the notes can go in, but they can’t readily come out, and they can’t be seen. At the end of the year, perhaps I will set the thing on fire for a touch of finality to letting the hurtful and dark things go. It’s all about letting them go. Writing them down gets them out of me. It takes the energy that might otherwise deflate me, and puts it away.
In essence, this exercise symbolically magnifies the goodness and diminishes the badness, and wraps it all up, happy and sad, in a thing of beauty. And that? Is a good thing.
captured thoughts
