Our kaleidoscopic castle grows taller, wider. An elaborate Lego internal structure gives way to a magnet tile outer wall and an attached garage. The garage is for the school bus.

This all began half an hour earlier in the hustle and bustle of my wife getting ready to leave for work. It began with a question.

“Do you want to build a castle?”

“I do.”

I explained to Jakey we would build an epic castle as soon as Heather left with the baby. I was holding Emily at that moment, trying to allow for her squiggling in my lap without dropping her. I like to let her move and sort out her environment. In horseback riding it’s called “giving the horse her head.” You might be letting her pick her way down a rocky path, but you’re still holding the reins. In the baby’s case, it’s not because she knows better, like the horse, but because she needs to do her thing and develop muscle and balance.

Emily is rocking back and forth, weighted this way and that by her 96th percentile noggin and the disjointed way she sometimes pistons her legs fast, like she’s a frog undergoing electrocution.

She looks stunning—and more than a little froggy—in her bright green terry cloth shorts and zip up sweatshirt set.

Soon the ladies of our household depart and Jakey asks, for the 20th time, “Do you want to build a castle.”

“Yes.”

The Lego castle comes together quickly. I’m doing much of the building initially and he is acting out an indecipherable scene with his Lego cat, bunny, bear, and turtle figurines. I tell him I’m going to put on a record and I scooch over to the turntable and take off the record that has lived there for a few months.

“Is that Jimmy Buffett?”

He knows me so well.

Living and Dying in 3/4 Time. A great album.

Also, he recognizes the shark that has been staring out at us from the album cover leaned against the record player for a long time. The front is a (much) younger Jimmy lounging on a shipwreck in shallow, tropical water. But, the back cover is wrapped in one big underwater photo of a shark. I want to say the shark looks like it is prowling and toothy and ferocious.

I put on an old favorite. Paul Simon’s Graceland from 1986, which I got for $4.99 in a record shop in Claremont a number of years ago. I know the cost because there is still a yellow price sticker affixed to the plastic slipcase that reads, “USED $4.99.”

Now we are grooving. If you aren’t familiar with the album, you should probably check it out. It is positively in my top-5 favs. If I am pressed, like in a desert island type situation, it might make my top-3. Which means it is not only toe-tapping and singalong awesome, but I could listen to it over and over and over when I’m in the right mood. I gotta think that is critical for a desert island.

So we’re building. And we’re rocking.

And Jakey says, “I like this music.”

Says it matter of fact, unsolicited. He just keeps on laying magnet tiles.

It’s right then I think about gratitude.

I try to pay attention to these moments and cherish them. I’m gonna get all clinical now, but study after study shows that practicing gratitude makes our lives better.

And I’ve worked on this for years. It comes and goes, but it feels good to pay attention to the good. In fact, I think I talked about this last month.

Yep, I did.

In grad school, one of my faculty handed out these tiny notepads on the first day of class and told us this was our Gratitude Journal. We were to write three things we were grateful for each day for several weeks. I kept it by my bed and tried, really tried, to remember each night to spend a few moments sifting back through my day for the bright spots.

The key is not to write, “1. My family 2. My job 3. My health” every day.

The keys is to dig a little deeper and find the unique moments from that day you should appreciate for their own sake. Chance encounters, experiences, the big moments or the very small moments we would usually overlook. Good will shown to us or that which we showed another.

The research is largely unified on the benefits of a gratitude focus and no study I know of finds a negative correlation. Because come on, taking a few moments of your day to reflect on positive encounters or experiences and developing our ability to feel grateful… What’s the alternative? Saying, “Nah, I’m too busy to take even a moment to be grateful for something in my day.”

It is a simple, conscious act that has been shown to increase happiness and decrease depression. To increase the amount people exercise and also improve sleep quality and self-esteem while reducing aggression.

It’s not a drug.

It’s paying attention to your thoughts and experiences in a mindful way.

It is as simple as gratitude.

Go on, give it a try.