Greetings Reader,

I feel grateful. Every day.

Maybe it's because I've been lucky and have a lot to be grateful for.

Or maybe I'm lucky to be able to feel grateful.

Grateful to be lucky, lucky to be grateful . . . whatever: I'm lucky and I'm grateful. Let's leave it at that.

My living situation is something I'm especially grateful for. I wake up every morning in a state of disbelief that I live in such a nice place.

My amazement might be easier to understand if you knew how close I came to living in a cardboard box under the elevated tracks of the Ditmars Blvd subway station. I could just as easily have wound up on the street as in our comfortable apartment with a great view in a beautiful co-op building nestled in a safe, quiet, and exceptionally pastoral part of our nation's capital.

Washington, D.C. is one of the safest cities in the nation and our neighborhood is one of the safest places in the city. Anyone living in South Sudan would probably rather be here than there.

National Guard troops are walking around town, adding a little je-ne-sais-quoi de dérangeant to D.C.'s usual vibe, but they don’t pose a threat that’s anything like that of the Revolutionary Guard patrols roaming the streets of Tehran.

And just like Sarah Palin, we can see Russia from where we live!

Well, technically: we can see the Russian Embassy from our building. Fortunately, they’re not launching missiles off the roof to take out our local power stations, so every apartment in our building is warmer than all the apartments in Kiev.

It’s hard to imagine how anyone who lives here could think they have something to complain about.

But guess what? Some of them do!

They have spacious dwellings and beautiful furnishings and financial security and comfort and convenience and every social advantage America confers on its upper-crusty citizens of European ancestry.

And yet, they are profoundly dissatisfied.

So much so that some of them (the usual suspects) leveraged our co-op's by-laws to call for a “Special Meeting” yesterday for the sole purpose of complaining ad nauseam to our Board of Directors and management staff about how incredibly terrible everything is.

In Minneapolis, people are risking their lives to protect their neighbors from a violent goon squad. In my building, people are risking nothing to attack their neighbors over trivialities and bruised egos.

It hurts my heart to see so many of my neighbors who have so much to be grateful for finding so many things to complain about.

And doing so in an irrationally vitriolic manner.

All of their complaints are rooted in fear: fear of change, fear of loss, and, ultimately, fear of death.

In some ways, I don’t blame my dissatisfied neighbors. I’d like to make time stand still, too.

But time marches on.

The cycle of coming into being, staying for some time, and going out of being can be a rough ride. And fear of loss is a real thing, especially when we get closer to the end of the cycle, when time picks up the pace of taking things — and people — away.

However much time I have left, I’m not going to waste a minute of it being afraid of what time will take away from me; I’m going to be grateful for all that is now, and all that is gone, and all that's to come, and everything under the sun — no matter how dark it gets.

Because an eclipse doesn't last forever.

Wishing you all good fortune,

- Hari-k

P.S: Join me next Sunday for The Yoga of Becoming Fearless, a new live online workshop for yoga teachers and practitioners who want to learn how traditional yoga wisdom guides us along the path to conquering our fears and keeping our balance in a topsy-turvy world. CLICK HERE for complete information and registration.