A Big Wild Mess

There’s a marquee message on a church lawn in Maine not too far from where I reported in the last Notes From the GratiDude “Start the day with gratitude and end with thanks.” We had all seen it and one of our family members said it’s the same thing isn’t it? It sure sounds like it at first pass. Maybe a way to make the idea more colorful and memorable. But isn’t there a nuance there?
The dictionary says gratitude is the quality or condition of being grateful; a warm sense of appreciation of kindness received, involving a feeling of goodwill towards the benefactor and a desire to do something in return; gratefulness. Whereas for thanks the definition is “the expression of gratitude; the grateful acknowledgement of a benefit or favor.” The former occurs more like a way of being while the latter is an action.
I see possibly before and after, intention followed by reality, bracketing the hours, teeing it up then later tallying a score, living into the day then debriefing it. There’s feeling gratitude and then there’s expressing it in some fashion. A plan and then a summing up. I’ll never know the original intent of the message, but for the purposes of our inquiry, it’s a good beginning place today.
Because I’m musing more about the uses of gratitude and how the effects aren’t always immediate and obvious, even if I am aware intellectually of how much I have. It’s almost like reciting a prayer or poem or participating in a call and response part of worship. It can feel dry and rote and at a remove from your soul, even though the words are true.
It’s probably unrealistic to think one can always be happy and unburdened, in some calm envelope or bubble. My long-time climbing buddy Ralph and I used to talk about that on our winter climbing trips in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Just outside the bubble lies trouble, outside the edges of the fire circle there are dark things with hungry eyes. That’s reality and it can be worked with and mitigated and lessened, just like with running. Some steps inevitably are rather more taxing and cumbersome and plodding, but maybe there are fewer of those over time as you get better and more efficient.
Same with gratitude, I suppose. Just being in the space of thankfulness is no guarantee of being unburdened, at least immediately. One foot after the other, keep moving and keep intending to say what’s great that you already have.
I wondered if being afraid or anxious is another way to say “focusing on what you don’t have, rather than what you do have.” In other words, I don’t have something (complete knowledge of or control over what’s coming up in front of me), but here’s what I do have. How should that make me feel? Less anxious? If so, should it be quickly or more gradual like yeast rising? It can’t ever be a bad idea or a waste of time to refocus on the what’s great, can it, even if you don’t feel better right away?
In Apollo 13, the flight director, played by Ed Harris, asked “What do we have on the spacecraft that works?” when the accident happened. A lot was wrong, but there was still a lot of right. Gratitude just does not sit still for easy analysis. Sometimes the practice is hard work and sometimes it’s easy. You can begin the day with the full expectation of joy and abundance and end it in grief, barely able to imagine saying the word “Thanks.”
It’s all a big wild mess at times, but as Dr Martin Shaw advised “Call out to the whole divine night for what you love. What you stand for. Earn your name. Be kind, and wild, and disciplined, and absolutely generous.” Do it anyway, no matter how you feel.

