find the grateful. then it’ll find you.

It’s about a 5-block walk from my bus stop to my office, and some days I take this empty little alley to get away from the rat race for a second.  Yesterday when I turned into the alley,  I walked upon someone sleeping on the sidewalk.

I’ve seen him sleeping in this spot before, and in a certain spot on 2^nd Street on my walk home from work some days.

He’s smart because these two spots are vents that blow out warm air.

The vent on 2^nd shoots hot air up from the sewer and he lays there in a straight line on top of it in the middle of the busy sidewalk at 5pm.  Warm and sound asleep.  The vent in the alley, where I walked by him today, is on the side of a building, about 15-ft across and blows clean-smelling warm air out of a gym’s laundry room.

Usually I find him in the alley sitting against the wall but yesterday morning he was laying in front of the vent on his back, on the sidewalk, with his legs resting on the wall, feet spread wide.  I had to chuckle a little as I realized how warm his ass must be feeling.  “You know what? Good for him for finding such a slick way to warm up that ass.”

…

The homeless population in San Francisco has broken my heart ever since the first time I came here as a kid.  Since I live here now, I had to come up with ways to emotionally handle seeing it every day (I’m “highly sensitive.” Google it).

So what I often do is, instead of feeling SO sad for the constant struggle they must go through, I spot the thing that the person DOES have and I send out a pulse of gratitude for it, for them.  “I’m so glad he has that blanket.”  “I’m so glad she’s not getting wet from the rain sitting there.”

As I walked past the vent-sleeper yesterday, I walked away feeling grateful that he found this genius way to warm his body and find some likely hard-to-come-by sleep.

…

As I came to the end of the alley, I walked upon this sign on the ground and stood frozen staring at it with goosebumps up my spine.

There could not have been a more accurate description of the thoughts I was JUST having, laid out right there on a piece of trash on my walk into work.

…

be grateful.. for anything…  please.