A Journaling Practice for Mundane, Everyday Gratitude

Background:

When she knew she was dying, Nora Ephron wrote the lists (below) of what she would and would not miss. As Brooklyn College English Majors pointed out, these lists exemplify Ephron’s writing style: giving attention to seemingly mundane details that allows worlds to come alive inside her writing.

Instructions:

This journaling invitation is to similarly give the mundane details of our own lives so much attention that they also come to life, creating glimmers of gratitude and grounding us in our surroundings. 

The instructions are simple: Read over Ephron’s lists (below). Grab a piece of paper and your favorite pen. A cup of tea or a glass of wine won’t hurt either! Then write. What will you miss? What won’t you miss? 

Optional:

If you are on the fence about this whole “journaling” concept, two suggestions: 

1. Set a timer for 15 minutes – or 5 minutes or 30, or whatever length of time you want. Giving yourself a container within which to write, with no pressure to continue after the allotted time, might make it seem more manageable. 

2. Journaling teacher Natalie Goldberg suggests using this rule: “keep your hand moving.” Once you sit down to write, just write – even if you have to write, “I don’t know what to write.” Getting your hand moving will help you stop the internal edits and start getting words on the page. 

“What I Won’t Miss” by Nora Ephron

Dry skin

Bad dinners like the one we went to last night

E-mail

Technology in general

My closet

Washing my hair

Bras

Funerals

Illness everywhere

Polls that show that 32 percent of the American people believe in creationism

Polls

Fox TV

The collapse of the dollar

Bar mitzvahs

Mammograms

Dead flowers

The sound of the vacuum cleaner

Bills

E-mail. I know I already said it, but I want to emphasize it.

Small print

Panels on Women in Film

Taking off makeup every night

“What I Will Miss” by Nora Ephron

My kids

Nick

Spring

Fall

Waffles

The concept of waffles

Bacon

A walk in the park

The idea of a walk in the park

The park

Shakespeare in the Park

The bed

Reading in bed

Fireworks

Laughs

The view out the window

Twinkle lights

Butter

Dinner at home just the two of us

Dinner with friends

Dinner with friends in cities where none of us lives

Paris

Next year in Istanbul

Pride and Prejudice

The Christmas tree

Thanksgiving dinner

One for the table

The dogwood

Taking a bath

Coming over the bridge to Manhattan

Pie

**Thank you to LaUra Schmidt and Aimee Lewis Reau, founders of the Good Grief Network for assigning the homework to write a poem based on Nikita Gill’s “Reasons to Live Through the Apocalypse." I shared this assignment (and what I turned in) with the One Small Stone meditation group. Thank you to Meeghan Prunty for responding with Nora Ephron’s lists. (If you’d like to join our meditation group - and sometimes poem sharing group - we’d love to have you. Sign up here.)