PLAY-TITUDE #20: GRATITUDE GROWS PLAYFULNESS

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.   

                                                                                                ~Friedrich Nietzsche

As I have grown in appreciate for playfulness and her sister, creativity, I have grown in deptth with their mother, gratitude.

Today I am grateful. 

Today I am grateful for a filled to the brim day. 

For morning rushes.  For writing quickly and efficiently.  For shortcuts and fluency to get there on time.  For doing this with ease—I am grateful. 

I am grateful for enjoying children.  For surprising hugs.  For calming a child going into a meltdown.  For telling mindless jokes and providing distractions to bring him into a place of centeredness and readiness for learning.  For his hug afterward.  I am grateful.  For looking at spider books with another friend.  For being with me being a haven, even though I push him to learn through work mixed with play in a way that he succeeds.  Again, gratitude. 

For running non-stop at school, yet making still moments for myself I am grateful.  For organization and a to-do list, I am grateful.

I am grateful for my graduate classes.  For their irritations.  For their inspirations.   For giving feedback to a student that could have been looked at as not positive, but for her walking away feeling validated…gratitude.  For my teaching partner who has so many good ideas…gratitude.  For knowing that I am making a difference in the lives of newly forming teachers. 

For play…the exploration of it.  The living and breathing of it.  The bubbling up of ideas and creativity of it.  For a growing spirit of playfulness akin to creativity.  For seeing the possibilities.  For dabbling.  For delving into.   For daring to do things just for fun.  For lightness that comes with play.

For listening to my gut that tells me to love the busyness, and the knowledge that creating more time and space will give me the creative center for which I long.  For a desire to create that space…gratitude.

For feeling ease in the rush…feeling blessed.  

PLAY-TITUDE #20:  GRATITUDE IN LIFE GIVES OPENINGS FOR PLAY

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for dedicating space and time for writers and teachers of writing to come together to share ideas, practice and life experience.