When I went off to college in 2007, I experienced the same sense of liberating happiness that a lot of freshmen get. A freshness of place, a new kind of freedom.
But I also caught another common revelation: that I had taken so many things for granted.
I didn’t know to be thankful for home until I moved out. Didn’t appreciate the amazing gift of a good family until I was apart from it and on my own. Never gave proper thanks for my mom’s mashed potatoes until I tried to make some of my own.
This is often the way it goes. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. The line seems so axiomatically true as to be an intrinsic part of the human condition.
At least in America, where we have so much to be grateful for, we don’t recognize how much gratitude is due. Sure, in an academic sense we know we’re well off. We know statistics and mantras about quality of life, income, material possessions and opportunity. We know that many of us live with unique privilege.
But while such blessings should breed gratitude, they so often breed entitlement. (Or, maybe just as bad, oblivious passivity.)
It’s too bad that we have to lose something — or, just as often, see someone else who’s lost it — to even notice that the thing we thought was ours was only a gift, only on loan, only temporary.
I didn’t appreciate my sight until I saw someone who was blind.
Rarely thanked God for my ability to read and write until I met a boy who couldn’t do either.
Sometimes it takes walking into a hospital or a prison to realize that your health and freedom were never guaranteed.
We should be more thankful for the things we have. I know I should be.
And not just material things — shelter, clothes, food, oxygen, technology — but more intangible, hard-to-measure things, too: an ability to reason, to feel emotion, to relate, to share, to give and receive, to think and believe, to speak or not speak.
And beyond being grateful for all good things — an ability that is itself a blessing, but one we seldom think on — we can even be grateful in the tough times. Because of what they teach us. What they make us. Where they lead us. Because God considered us worthy and able to face trials.
This is getting awfully close to preaching, so I’ll be done. Except to say thanks for everything, and to quote the Buddha:
Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us be thankful.
And a Christian addendum: And if we died, we are looking God in the face, so let us be thankful.
So true. So wise. Now I need to be thankful to you for sharing your wisdom.
Your last two posts reminded me of this poem with its thankfulness for small things–even that which meets us between first waking and breakfast.
Song of Praises by Robert Siegel
for the gray nudge of dawn at the window
for the chill that hangs around the bed and slips
its cold tongue under the covers
for the cat that walks over my face purring murderously
for the warmth of the hip next to mine and sweet lethargy
for the cranking up of the will until it turns me out of bed
for the robe’s caress along arm and neck
for the welcome of hot water, the dissolving of
the night’s stiff mask in the warm washcloth
for the light along the while porcelain sink
for the toothbrush’s savory invasion of the tomb of the mouth
and resurrection of the breath
for the warm lather and the clean scrape of the razor
and the skin smooth and pink that emerges
for the steam of the shower, the apprehensive shiver and then
its warm enfolding of the shoulders
its falling on the head like grace
its anointing of the whole body
and the soap’s smooth absolution
for the rough nap of the towel and its message to each skin cell
for the hairbrush’s pulling and pulling,
waking the root of each hair
for the reassuring snap of elastic
for the hug of the belt that pulls all together
for the smell of coffee rising up the stairs announcing paradise
for the glass of golden juice in which light is condensed
and the grapefruit’s sweet flesh
for the eggs like two peaks over which the sun rises
and the jam for which the strawberries of summer have
saved themselves
for the light whose long shaft lifts the kitchen
into the realms of day
for Mozart elegantly measuring out the gazebos
of heaven on the radio
and for her face, for whom the kettle sings, the coffee percs,
and all the yellow birds in the wallpaper spread their wings.
(Siegel, A Pentecost of Finches: New and Selected Poems, 2006)
You reminded me of e.e. cummings’
poem:
i thank you God for this most amazing
by E. E. Cummings
i thank You God for this most amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
wich is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
E.E. Cummings always seems to have something strangely fitting to say. Thank you for this reminder.
That is a very cool poem. Also, “A Pentecost of Finches” is a really sweet title. You’ve piqued my interest.