A Little Q and A (Final Part)
Before a couple of final questions from this interview, I want to point out that, with this post, number 300, Notes From the GratiDude has reached some kind of milestone. I get to declare that because one of the great lessons for me has been that nothing comes freighted with meaning, like appliances or toys with “Batteries not included” on the box. In and of itself, the number three hundred, whether blogposts or almonds or sunrises or likes on Facebook, doesn’t “mean” anything. We have to supply that. They are just electronic and virtual dots.
According to the site host, there are 198, 511 words flowing in a wake out behind this post, spreading out like a jet trail in the ether, an average of 663 per effort since the first one dated March 11, 2016.
Today, with 300 “in the books,” I’m exceedingly grateful for you who have continued to read these and have been teaching me, while I engage in this inquiry. A Zulu proverb I learned says “A person is a person because of other people.”
WGAT–There are themes and sages you refer to over and over again, like Joseph Campbell.
GDUDE–Great books like Walden or The Iliad or (fill in your blank) can be read and reread without exhaustion. The book doesn’t change, but the reader does, the circumstances do. Someone once advised that to see something different you should take the same path and old Heraclitus taught us how impossible it is to step into the same river twice. The river doesn’t change much, but the wader does.
For instance, any one involved in an Inquiry Into A Gratitude-Inspired Life needs to see these lines many times–
For all that has been — thanks. For all that shall be — yes.
WGAT–Another one of your favorite sages.
GDUDE–Yes, that’s from Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish diplomat, Nobel Peace Prize winner and second Secretary General of the UN, who died in a plane crash in 1961. I have alluded to him before in this blog because parts of his book Markings have been important inspirations in my life. My climbing buddy Ralph and I often quoted from and referred to the volume while we hiked or sat and had lunch or sipped our tea and took off our crampons at the end of a long uphill day.
I’ve had some shitty days (no doubt of my own creation — I’m remembering that pain is inevitable, while suffering is my own option), when just about all I could do was reach toward an idea; a concept called gratitude. Like feeling your way in the dark, trying to negotiate a room’s dimensions and not stub your toe.
But, I believe that repeated act has had power, just the reaching, the inquiries of “what’s great about this?” and “for what can I be thankful right now?” The habit matters, I think. It establishes some kind of baseline, some kind of Ariadne’s thread through the maze.
Certain ideas just bear constant repeating. We need to hear Joseph Campbell’s words about saying YES to all of life over and over again. How many times is enough to read Mary Oliver ask “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” How many times is enough to read Rumi?
WGAT–What’s next for the GratiDude?
GDUDE–Well, after enjoying this view for a few minutes, this outcropping of rock where I get to sit and take off my pack and rest and take in the scenery, I’ll get back on the trail and keep climbing. This is an inquiry after all, and it’s all about the journey. I don’t see a real summit in sight yet.
I read recently that the personal essay leaves its question on the page, there for everyone to see, and is a forum for self-doubt and an attempt whose outcome is not assured. That’s what I see a lot in my own musings in this inquiry. I leave a lot of questions on the page.
