This is The Nooner, a short daily (Monday - Saturday) newsletter slash podcast that has its very own section within Dispatches from Inner Space.
Every Sunday, I publish the Dispatches Weekly Digest (DWD), which lets you binge all the Nooners from the previous week. It also includes a meaningful song recommendation, and a short segment I call TMI, where I go off script to bring you backstage, so to speak.
Two more things about the DWD:
It goes on on the main Dispatches channel, so if you’re looking to spare your inbox from the daily emails without missing out on anything, you can specifically unsubscribe from The Nooner section, and still get the Digest on Sunday.
It’s only available to paid subscribers.
The Dispatches Weekly Digest is a labor of love, and I’m really proud of it, and if you want to hear it, I want you to hear it. So, if you can afford it…
And if you can’t, but you still think of yourself as one of my true fans, let me know and we’ll work something out.
One day, in the car...
My son sings softly to himself in the back while the setting sun shoots liquid gold through the window. We’re on the way to the grocery store to buy pie, any pie.
And I’m miserable.
Why?
Oh who knows. Something about attitude. Fickle chemical balances in the brain. A preoccupation with some thing or set of things that just isn’t going my way.
Does it matter?
The substance of life can be objectively wonderful, objectively beautiful and sublime, regardless of how we FEEL about it.
But maybe just recognizing that is enough. To acknowledge the objectivity of grace, the way the sun shines down on everything with no absolutely no concern for our feelings, is perhaps the most reliable way to practice gratitude.
After all, it wouldn’t even be possible to practice gratitude if you had to rely on feeling grateful to do it. We don’t have that kind of control over our feelings. We wish we did, but we don’t.
Which means yes, it is possible to be grateful without feeling grateful. The good news is that the more you practice being grateful, the more often you get to feel it, too.
Can you be grateful without feeling grateful?