Be Astonished. Tell About It.
Embarking on this Inquiry Into A Gratitude-Inspired Life is sometimes definitely like peeling that proverbial onion, layer after layer, asking “what’s great about this?” Now, what’s great about this? Now? Now? What about now? I don’t know what this habit is or what you call this writing. I pick up a pen and start, hoping to be grounded solidly in thanks for the day, no matter how I feel or what’s happened, “good” or “bad” (“for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,” as The Bard said in Hamlet). More than ten years doing this, holy smokes.
It definitely isn’t a one-off gratitude thing. This has been a road, stretching out both ways, no end in sight. No end in sight, like a walkabout or forty years in the wilderness. Truth is, I don’t have a destination in mind, no end game. All I had originally was “keep a gratitude journal,” which looked like listing things for which I was grateful. I did this faithfully for weeks, months, and noticed it had begun to morph into something else, moving from “list” to “journal” and I was writing about the previous day and what happened and what I learned reflecting on some current event or a book I was reading or poem I found meaningful.
Then I’d write thanks for that event or book or poem or thanks for the influence on me of that famous person who died or thanks for whatever lessons there are in having a shoulder replacement or losing a father when I was five or thanks for that particular criticism even though I thought you were a shithead the way you delivered it or thanks for the onset of cold weather and the snow that hides all the litter and dog turds or thanks for whatever is to be learned from this presidential election or thanks for this line from Haruki Murakami’s Dance Dance Dance (“Appreciating an attractive middle-aged woman is one of the great luxuries in life”) or thanks for that turn of a pretty ankle or that dimple on her knee or for how painful it was to have our dog put down or lose that Silver Maple from a lightning strike (which led to having a sunny space for a garden) or my mom having a stroke but surviving or having a new granddaughter in Sweden far away or going to Fenway Park and keeping score with my friend or watching the prevailing winds nag at the dune grass overlooking Provincetown Harbor or for whatever good might come from the impacts of the gas explosions in Merrimack Valley (the anniversary of which is coming up this week) or for the joy of a late dinner with friends on the porch as the sun dissolves into the western horizon or how good the first cup of coffee tastes. Ten years of doing that is what I’ve been doing. Everyday, dirt-simple stuff, no horizon in sight, no end game.
I am not clear about what I know for sure about gratitude, if anything. I know there’s a lot of work being done and a lot of science and metrics. The only thing I know for sure is what this feels like every day, whether I’m drunk with gratitude to begin the morning or whether I’m not.
Mary Oliver (RIP) had a simple formula which sums this up in a few words. “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
