A Full Cup by Nannette Croce

When Barbara Quinn first asked me to join in the Year of Gratitude, I panicked. Could I come up with 365 days worth of gratitude? Then I looked around me. Was I kidding? The laptop I’m typing on, the cozy room I’m sitting in, just the “small” things I take for granted that others can’t even dream of would fill several years. So, in starting off the year, I am grateful to Barb for encouraging me to focus on what is good in my life. Often, the less we have the more gratitude we feel. A homeless person is grateful for a warm spot to sleep. My husband and I complain that our new heater drowns out the TV. We forget how lucky we are to have heat––and air conditioning––controlled by a thermostat we don’t even think about. We notice only when it’s gone, and when it comes back, are we grateful? No, we usually complain about the price of repair or how long the power company took to fix the outage. I’m grateful this project will encourage me to appreciate both the big and small things in my life. To not just see the cup as “half full,” but realize that it's overflowing.

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