Last week, I wrote about making goals for the new year. For us, a major goal this year is to take more time to reflect on our good friends, memories and experiences and to be more intentional with our gratitude. It sounds cheesy, but taking a minute to write something good down when it happens really makes you stop, pause and realize, Hey, this is a big/important/special moment.
One of my favourite quotes is by a Quaker missionary named Etienne de Grellet and it begins with "I shall pass this way but once..." and I often keep that in mind when something good (or bad) happens. If you've been reading my condo saga, you'll know that we had a few challenging years before we moved into our new/old house. Perhaps this is why our "Thanks Jar" tradition was born in the condo, when we needed a push sometimes to remember how lucky we truly were or perhaps just a reminder to be kind and tolerant with people. Basically, we just keep a pen and small pieces of paper handy and when one of us thinks of something to add to the jar, we write it down and pop it in. Over the holiday, we'll go through the jar together and read and remember everything. It's like watching our own feel-good movie about our own lives. It also always makes us feel more charitable and we try to pay it forward in the days to come.
This would make a great tradition for Thanksgiving or New Year's Day, but sometimes if I'm a little blue, I'll read a couple at random just to make myself smile.
Up until this year, we just used a bowl or jar that we kept in the kitchen. We finally decided we needed a more permanent vessel, we etched the work "Thanks" onto one of the jars we collected from Value Village for the candy buffet we are planning on having at our wedding. What do you think?
We already have our first couple of notes from 2014 and we're excited to begin this year on such a positive note! What are you grateful for? Are you impressed that I resisted the urge to write "Primrose Everdeen" on one of the scraps of paper?