Expensive Wordplayers,

Yearly round this time, I look ahead to taking a second to jot down you this word. It offers me a possibility to sink in and ponder the depths of my gratitude.

The older I get, the extra I consider gratitude is the key sauce. With out it, nothing is sweet. With it, all of life is miraculous. I don’t consider gratitude is a sense, any greater than love is. It’s a state of being, a frequency we should select to embody. It’s a aware selection.

Pictures by Mackenzie Westphal.

It is usually a pressure that adjustments the world—maybe, paradoxically, much less as a result of it calls for change and extra as a result of it’s targeted on accepting and celebrating precisely what’s.

Gratitude is relentless optimism. It’s discovering the capability, nonetheless small and unlikely, to consider that life has objective, that tragedy is by some means worthwhile, that the story all the time arcs.

I’m deeply grateful for the arcs my life has taken me on. I’m much more grateful for the usually miraculous capacity to search out gratitude even on the lowest moments of these arcs—and to get to see how typically (all the time, actually) that gratitude is finally rewarded past my wildest hopes.

I’m grateful to my lifelong love for and devotion to story—which has given me the muse to see the patterns and the arcs, not simply in novels and in movies, however in my very own life–to know with some certainty the place I could also be throughout the bigger cycle—to really feel the play of deeper themes and to belief the utter reliability of story in its inherent seek for growth, reality, and goodness.

I’m grateful to be a author, a storyteller. I’m grateful to be a narrative theorist—to get to expertise not simply story, however Story.

And I’m so grateful I get to share this journey with all of you. You might be part of my story, my that means, my objective. Like every good story, I have no idea precisely what occurs subsequent. However I do know the place we now have been. I do know that we now have journeyed collectively for nearly 20 years now. I’ve gotten to witness your goodness, your willpower, your graciousness, your grit, your curiosity, your brilliance, your humility, and your drive. Thanks, thanks, thanks for all of that—for being you, being right here, and being brave sufficient to inform your tales.

Thanks, and pleased Thanksgiving!

P.S. Solely a handful of days left on my Black Friday sale: 25% off each product in my retailer, together with my books, workbooks, brand-new worksheets, programs, software program, and writing meditations.