Blessed Greetings!

My father regularly encouraged my brothers and me with, “Count your blessings”. It wasn’t until I was long out on my own that I began to grasp what he advocated. Basically, it means to be thankful for everything, the full spectrum of life, all that is. That concept took quite a while to fully wrap my head around; I mean, why would I want to be thankful even for what I don’t like or understand? Well, over time I came to realize there’s very good reason: we really don’t know what anything means or might lead to, but all that we experience adds up to become the fabric of our lives. All of it together forms our foundation, it allows us to have progressed to wherever we currently are and progress into the future. Of course, some of the details of my life have been messy in the moment, but I’m very glad for all that it has taken for me to be here now, in every sense. Gratitude has become an all-day every-day practice, an opportunity to realize I’m blessed beyond beyond.

On this day of Thanksgiving, I find myself thankful even for dinosaurs! There’s a little explanation at this link as to specifically why I’m thankful for dinosaurs:

https://balloonbill.smugmug.com/Other/My-Camera/

And, switching gears, for a little look behind the scenes and a personal version of “how the sausage is made”, a glimpse can be seen here:

https://balloonbill.smugmug.com/Other/Behind-The-Scene/

Remembering to count my blessings can be an interesting thing. To me, this goes hand-in-hand with ‘going with the flow’ and choosing the path of least resistance, as in it’s always counterproductive to struggle against anything. I embrace the concept of ease & flow, to know that everything will work out fine if I let go and allow it, that it does no good to fret about how.

Opportunities to practice in this manner are continuous, but some occasions naturally stand out more than others. For example, my recent experience with the Moroccan police allowed me to consciously choose to surrender, which resulted in my feeling really good, without knowing the details of how it would actually work out.

And, when I arrived in Larnaca on Tuesday, another clear opportunity arose for me. While organizing myself for travel from Cyprus to Azerbaijan, you can imagine my surprise when I saw that my plane ticket was not for November 22nd, but for October 22nd! There’s a long explanation of how that happened, but the short of it is I had no flight. And, there was no such flight schedule on November 22nd. Fortunately, there is a flight today and with a seat available, so I bought new tickets, to fly today to Tbilsi and then on to Baku. So, I might actually end up in Azerbaijan tonight. I’m now at the airport, all checked in and ready to go. We’ll see what happens. During this process, I happened to cross paths with a most delightful fellow traveler, so it has already been well worth the little SNAFU. Life is always interesting!

Spending an extra day in Cyprus has also been a good thing in another way, as it allowed me time to go to a beautiful place yesterday that I would not otherwise have done. And to see another sunrise on the Mediterranean. Life is good.

Wishing you Happy Thanksgiving, today and every day!

Bill