How may I serve?

Gratitude and expectations are recurring thoughts that have been dancing about the noodle lately.  This is in no way unusual considering the time of year.  However, I feel that these words need to be given their due.  As my company expands into new ventures and starts gaining extra attention, the synergy and momentum it builds carries with it the emotions and thoughts that this blog has only begun to address.  We touched on the idea of expectation in a most recent show, and I’ll leave it at that until the New Year’s edition of the Five Gallon Podcast.    Rolling up to Christmas I’m intending on focusing heavily on being more grateful and aware of the abundance in my life.  I must admit, I have a cool job, amazing home, good friends, and every opportunity to sustain and grow these areas of my life.  Also, I have a hardening appreciation that all these things are not my possessions, but ephemeral elements that are granted to me only because my life falls into the path that it should.  They, as with all the 10,000 things which are named, are not eternal and therefore subject to change.  Embracing this motion and this constant change is a big part of being grateful for it.  Quiet, thoughtful observation of the nature of universe can only invoke gratitude and bewilderment.  When I pray every morning and every night, I ask for nothing (no thing).  Everything I have is here or within reach of ‘now’.  What I pray for is a continued ability to see what I have, what others need, and how I may serve.