toast to joy

To practice positivity in each day I've taken to writing joy lists. These lists I learned from a book I recently read about appreciative living, where you are asked to look for three things (people, places, items) and focus on each item through the process of meditation and positive focus. Because my mind tends to drift in the presence of silence, I decided to take it to another level by expanding on my decisions through writing. By reflecting on the items as I wrote, at the end of each day, I found I was thinking ahead into the following day, anticipating the next installment of what I would come to discover. It's kind of interesting the things you find along the way.


Like toast for example. I do love toast, but for reasons I hadn't considered until I thought more into it. What is it about toast that increases my joy? For the more obvious reasons, I have always enjoyed toast for the convenience it provides me on days/nights when I'm not in the mood to make something that requires effort and/or mind power. As I continued to write about what I love so much about toast -which felt kind of silly at first- it began to illustrate something more than I expected; change.

As I've gravitated to the more "grown up" varieties like whole grain, flax or dark rye with a spackling of raspberry jam or simple butter and honey, I begin to snicker at the days when this sort of idea would have resulted in a wrinkled nose or a quick grab for a bag of fluffy white bread with a stubborn "no" to the idea of trying something new and unfamiliar. Never in my life would I have thought that something so insignificant as a piece of toast would illustrate to me the stages of growth and transformation.


As I closed my journal with a gratified feeling for writing over a page and a half about the joys that a piece of toast has provided me, it made me look forward to finding more of these sorts of items which we often take for granted. With each day comes a new discovery and a piece to the jigsaw puzzle of who I am internally. If you're ever stuck in a rut, I highly recommend a little list of joy, just three little things that come to mind. You might be surprised by the things you find.