Shakespeare, Stratford and the Auto-Flush

Last week we took our kids on the first field trip of the school year. We headed to Stratford to the famous Shakespeare Festival to see a production of A Mid Summer Night's Dream. I do have some specific thoughts about the production itself, but it was not really that performance that has left the greatest impression upon me. The performance that has stuck with me, challenged me and has had me thinking a lot actually happened a few minutes before the play began, in the downstairs washroom of the theatre that my sons and I visited just before the show began.
There we were, alone in the washroom when all of a sudden, while minding my own business, I hear a "woo-hoo, all electric." I looked over just in time to see my son Liam doing a happy dance in front of the auto-flush urinal. While I tried to whisper forcefully for him to stop being an idiot before someone comes in and sees him, he proceeded to swagger/dance over to the sinks and finally to the stalls to confirm that, yes, all the amenities worked automatically by a motion sensor. He was quite impressed and very excited by this fact. It is not as if he has never seen these things before, but none the less he still thought it was cool and worth making mention of.
I have been thinking a lot about this incident over the past week, and wondering if there are some good lessons for me. How many opportunities to celebrate, to be thankful and to express gratitude do I miss everyday because I forget to see the small things. If I am being completely honest, I think that there is a very important lesson for someone like me who battles with bouts of depression, to intentionally take pause to appreciate, give thanks and celebrate the many little blessings around me. I often take the "little things" around me for granted only to invest that energy fretting over the negative things or the challenges in life. What if I were to retrain my brain to recognize and give thanks for the many wonderful things all around me. There is so much to be thankful for and to celebrate!
I have been thinking about what I have learned in terms of our Thirty Days of Almost Nothing experiment as well. I recognize this as a key to breaking the patterns of consumerism in a commercialized culture. By focusing on all that I do have, I hope to be less tempted to be influenced by the many different voices around me suggesting that happiness and contentment will come by having one more product, one more service or one more opportunity to scratch a metaphoric itch. The funny thing about scratching an itch is that it always seems to reveal another itch creating a seemingly never ending cycle of unscratched itches. Final satisfaction never seems to come.
I am going to endeavour to appreciate the small things, the many blessings around me that I so often take for granted. I wonder if this was a key that the apostle Paul understood when he wrote about "the secret of being content in any and every situation..." (Philippians 4:12)
So how about you, what are some of the blessings, the little things all around you that are worth celebrating and giving thanks for? Feel free to leave a comment!