Gratitude In A Time Of Strife

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It’s tough stuff out there in the world right now. The thought of a national day of thanks, which is on the near horizon here in the U.S., seems like a privilege. Gratitude might be one of the last things folks are imagining in some places of the world.

This is my fourth attempt at this essay. I’ll write a draft, read the news, then trash the draft. How can I talk about gratitude when in more than one corner of the world there’s war? How can I talk about learning to be happy with less, when somewhere else refugees are about to be kicked back to the place from which they escaped? Should I ask my reader to consider the blessings of plentiful resources when in yet another region kids resemble stick figures? And those are just the places my news feed is telling me about this hour. There are plenty more where they came from.

Here I am in America in a nice house with a happy family and I think writing about a ritual of thanks for all I have is appropriate right now.

Except that’s deaf as a stone. So, I scrap another draft.

I asked myself out loud after reading a particularly bleak news article, “How does one write for a wider audience in a time like this?” I don’t want to depress people more. Nor do I want to breeze through the essay like a happy-go-lucky. I’m left at an impasse with only questions.

I imagine what it’d be like to stand next to a train wreck, listening to the occupants’ cries from inside the rail cars, and say to myself, “I really want to say thanks for all the times I got to hear Pink live in concert.”

That’s absurd. Nobody would say that. What if I said instead, “I really want to say thanks for my health, safety, and good fortune.” That’d be more typical, but no less absurd, standing there, hearing the cries.

Right now, we’re standing next to a very large train wreck.

This Thanksgiving is a complicated time, but not nearly as complicated as the lives of the folks living through trauma right now. How can a day of celebration take into account simultaneous suffering?

Lately, when I come to a crossroads and don’t know which direction to turn, I’ve learned to ask myself what the opportunity is for me here. By opportunity, I often mean lesson, too. It took me eons to get to that question, even though it’s a concept as old as the sun.

Where’s the opportunity at hardship meets privilege meets gratitude meets crossroad?

For one, what I focus on will get lungs and grow. In no time, that focus becomes me, I become it. When I go out into the world, the world will officially log one more bit of whatever-that-is onto its spreadsheet of vibe on the planet. I’m only ever worth one checkmark on that spreadsheet, but I can influence other checkmarks. And others can influence mine. I guess that’s why they say choose your friends wisely. They say that about the news, too.

I gravitate toward folks who tend to see things from more angles rather than less. I don’t know if that tendency is a skill someone builds, a predisposition, or luck. Probably all three. I think about that a lot.

This Thanksgiving those folks are one of the things I’m grateful for. I don’t know how much influence the broad-minded have on the world, but I know some of them are working hard to mitigate tragedy right now in some spots. I can’t imagine a harder job. Most of my gratitude is for them these days.

Some people have a big checkmark on that spreadsheet, while the rest of us have a smaller one, but in the collective, we make a difference. What kind of influence do I want to feed? And how does one determine what is positive and what is negative? Maybe that’s not possible, but I’ll tell you I watched my dad hand-wring over the political discussion on his television just as the Ukraine war broke out. He knew he was days away from death. That was a big lesson for me.

For the first time in my life, I contemplated how I’d like to die if I had a choice of timing — I don’t. But it got me thinking that even in the throes of death, unless it’s swift, I might have some choice for how I experience it. When that time comes, perhaps I’ll even have the chance to be one last positive checkmark to the world’s tally, no matter how small and invisible. Needless to say, my choices expand exponentially for how might I live.

Am I answering my question about opportunity?

Right now, I live in a country whose circumstance is peace and stability. It’s true we’re a little conflicted with each other lately, but hopefully, our checkmarks will start to veer toward the positive soon. I’ll do my part, which is all I can do. To be able to imagine this as a possibility is something for which I’m grateful this Thanksgiving. I believe it’s the least our country could do to show our gratitude for our circumstances here.

I think about families that infight, friends that ghost each other, and neighborhoods that have conflict among their residents. In one of the most privileged places on Earth, is gratitude best shown in how well we show up each day? That’s a tall order, I know, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible or not true.

This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for continued diplomacy in the world, for humanitarian organizations, and for folks working on the ground to help those in dire need. I’m grateful for the love the world seems to be sending over to the various corners of the planet rather than hate or indifference. Just off the top of my head, there are two wars going on, death in Darfur, refugees in various places living tentatively, and natural disasters galore. There are plenty of opportunities to be grateful for how we as a collective show up in the face of such hardship.

Or, put another way:

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” Mahatma Gandhi, 1913

I’m not going to wait, and that’s my gratitude for today.

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Hope you're well, friends.