Fun At the Y.M.C.A.
After reading the last blog post, my sister-in-law wondered if I was depressed and I can’t say I blame her. I wrote, among other cheerful lines, “What’s the point of all this anyway? I’m thinking a lot about that this morning, wondering what else there is to say about gratitude, without repeating stuff over and over and over again. I don’t know what it all adds up to, honestly” and “So what if I miss one day, anyway? What difference will it really make?”
Where do I sign up for that blog? Wow, thanks for the enlightenment.
This however is the duality I live with as I work on living a life inspired by gratitude. Some days I have a glad and thankful heart, other days not so much. Take for example my experience at the Y yesterday.
I got out of the pool after my swim and, drying off in the locker room after a shower, noticed a guy still in his bathing suit looking at his cell phone while dripping water on the floor. He hadn’t even dried off yet and was standing right next to the sign at eye level which says “Absolutely no cell phone use allowed in locker room, including phone calls, texting, social media.” He is no millennial either, the cohort from which I more commonly see this behavior. He’s somewhere in his fifties I estimate, not that much younger than I am, and he can’t keep his eyes off his mobile. I’m wondering what could be so enchanting or urgent that he can’t wait until he gets at least to his car.
Frankly I’m out of the excuses I make for people. I’ve tried to assume well maybe this guy just lost his wife or his kid’s in jail or his mom has cancer, that kind of thing. I look for the possible reasons, but I’m out of those. I’m telling you not everyone who’s walking around looking so seriously at those little genies has an emergency needing their attention in that moment.
However, that genie is out of the bottle and there’s no point complaining about it and, given everything I write about gratitude, I am still one judgmental smug bastard at times, making up stories about what people do and why they do it. Let me tell you the GratiDude lives at the corner of Ecstasy Street and Judgment Avenue within view of the Whiny River, and I don’t mean like Homer’s wine-dark sea.
This is my everyday reality, judging people who don’t do things the way I think they ought to be done, people who didn’t vote the way I voted, people who don’t smile at me or eat the way I eat. I really do want to be living in gratitude all the time, but sometimes I just give in to that other voice. Look no further than yesterday at the YMCA to see that I have a ton more work to do. How small and contracted I can feel when I’ve let myself be backed into a corner due to judgment like this.
Then, like a grace, I can feel the upsweep toward the larger me, the me with larger life, containing Whitmanesque multitudes, into which little screwups can be folded, like perhaps a bit of accidental eggshell into an omelet. It’s an error, but it’s far from the whole breakfast. You might run into it, briefly, with a chew, or you might swallow it, unnoticed. In any event it’s very very small.
My wife has taken on saying “Bless you and everyone you care about” when a driver pisses her off. This is new behavior for her, she readily admits, but I like the idea, so I tried that on with this guy in the locker room. I liked that version of me better. I also found myself saying thank you for the technology, no matter how it’s used, being grateful it’s available. I also noticed how judgmental I was being, even as I was being judgmental, and was able to laugh at my foolishness, which is always a win.
