What a great morning it was, with sun shining and people gently stewing in the summer heat, its 26 C in the shade. And we love the Sun here in the UK, so little of it these days. One for gratitude I guess. I meandered down to my fellowship meeting this sunny morning, with feet fit to ache, it’s a diabetic thing I am told, yet gratitude, after all, I am still walking.

Why am I thinking about gratitude. Smiles here, because this was our subject in our meeting of the fellowship. Each and every one of us, a days reprieve from obsession and we know it. In fact this was the only subject up for debate this morning and I could see those of us suffering from a lack might be in need of something to fill their tanks with different capacities. Gratitude however was unchallenged and the sadder of our number looked peevish as our speaker this morning was extremely grateful to be in love with their partner.

I could see most in the room had their licks from broken relationships and the gratitude expressed for falling in love with another over again made them prick up their ears. Lovers, partners, husbands and wives, girlfriends and boyfriends felt the tale of love reborn, was therapeutic. That there was hope to mend broken down things called relationships and not everything had to turn to the bad as sobriety made obvious our own flaws and those, our objects of affection.

In due course as others began to speak it was clear not everyone had this epiphany in their sober goings on, that many suffered like me from their incomplete selves having lost great loves and great lovers. And there was gratitude for that, for the outcome was our incomplete selves were never to be the same again. And some were just struggling with living through the day and not at all grateful for their loves lost, or lovers hanging on for grim deaths to come.

It was a very mixed picture of gratitude, on this score. And for those with children, lost to other halves and unable to get to see their children, it was hard for gratitude to flow. Yet we felt the joy in harmony where it will flourish and hope is kindled as others relish new love. And we can hope for ours to blossom too. We know we ask too much when fantasy is our dream and dreams are pitched to perfection. We realised that love indeed grows through time and living and working hard at living love.

No easy step to love. We work for everything these days, as hard as we might, without any guarantees. And we are grateful for opportunity to live the day we have and then we never know what may occur, today is all that matters.

And for some with years of living to the good, there can be flatness as life’s chaos calms and each day is met with valour and aplomb, but raging highs and deathly lows are vanquished as time heals those peaks and troughs, makes for a boredom lingering just behind our tranquillity. Just lingering enough to realise that we are able to make our choices, and keep our calm and let go our tempests, till another time and crisis looms. We can recall with euphoric ease the highest high the lowest pit where agony awaits its medicated view…

We know the difference as we keep our path narrow and true, a day at a time with careful tread we build our true capacities.

Whether its love or hate or something in between we feel our connection grow to truth, and truth most often meets our quest with wisdom learned and stored, so stormy times are fewer now. There is always a wriggle for exciting times and we are never far away from getting giddy and indifferent to safer ways to play. Yet we keep our sober path as joyful times are more fulfilled in connected feelings than ever fantasy.

This connection to our day where life is sorted as we go, where our expression meets our match, and we don’t overplay our hand. We reckon better times are had as we move along serenely with our daily living.

Serenity is hard won as we all travel along our path, all Journeymen are we, with care and due attention paid to us and all we meet on our way, well mostly we intend it so and know its rocky now and then. What we experience with our true emotions ready and express our views as honestly we can, we make our way more easily as if there were a plan. We plan to make our day work is all we can say, with gratitude when it works and gratitude when it fails us miserably, for both were experienced as best we can.

What a motley crew we are in this collection of ordinary fellows. Our age is indeterminate, we span from youth to very old, men and women and in between, well its hard to tell these days. From every hue and walk of life we sit on common ground, all of us human, every one, full of living and living to do, we talk on subjects close to our hearts.

Our feelings and our thinking grows as time allows, sometimes slow and often fast, we cannot make experience speed up and bring us instant wisdom. We learn as we can and sometimes every so slowly, it feels as if we are going backwards, then with sprints we get a breakthrough and let experience come our way.

We learn with painful rectitude and with gratitude we learn to live as life allows, there is no race to win. The winning as was said today is in our journey and how we live each and every day.

Our past informs us as we listen, to keep to safer ways of living, its never easy to keep this path, as slippage is our natural way. We know it takes us time to grow, and we never reach a perfect place. Serenity is in our daily endeavours and never in our endings.

Far from perfect we often find and comments that our world demands so much we never can achieve. If we live in future dreams we run to peril very quickly and when our past fills our heads we are stuck for as long as the time it takes to make a forward step.

We differ in our ways to live, everyone has their own path to tread, yet we learn from each and everyone from success to mistakes and slips and lapse what it takes to make this single day work as best we can. And as for gratitude, its two edged like every element of life, as often surviving is as good as it can get.

No reveries of glorious changes, most of us moving along as experience develops, and sometimes quick, most often steady, we make our lives work because we are ready and accept life as it comes. We make our choices and we take our licks, sometimes it sucks and then as we meet our day sober, a day at a time, we get a kick out of life.