The Gratitude Reset Button
Annie Dillard notes in The Writing Life, that “Process is nothing; erase your tracks, the path is not the work, I hope your tracks have grown over. I hope birds ate the crumbs. I hope you will toss it all and not look back.”
I think that here is the fulcrum for me about this Inquiry Into A Gratitude-Inspired Life, the edge, maybe the place where the sea encounters the land. For ten years now, I have been writing about the process. No, that’s not right, exactly. Not just writing about the process, but having it be the process. The actual act of writing, seeing the words spool out anachronistically through a pen via the agency of ink and paper hopefully connecting like a sort of synapse to my heart (the head bone’s being connected to the neck bone and all). With all due respect to Annie D’s advice, this writing practice has been everything, the path has been the work.
That’s the place I stand, one foot on each strand of this braid. Process is all, process is nothing. Is this gratitude work about a finished product or is it about the daily, often messy, work of looking for the gold in the muck and deliberately looking for what’s great instead of what sucks?
There’s a reset underway in the Whole Foods Market where I spend my working days. That’s one of the gifts of retail. Things get reset and rejiggered a lot. The ebb, the flow, the constant renewal, restocking overnight that reminds one of high tide in the new morning replacing low levels, new marketing ideas depending on the season, like Easter and Passover right now, as surely as the moon pulls the tide.
A sign just inside the entrance says “We are moving things around in our grocery department to help better serve you. Please see a team member if you need help finding something.” No one seems to mind, given that it will be short-term. “Yes, sir, the strawberry jam is right over here now” and “Sure, the soup is a couple aisles over, I’ll show you.” No problem.
It’s too bad people can’t wear T-shirts that say “Pardon my appearance, while I reset” and hope for similar patience from others in our lives. I wondered what it would have been like, had I known the road ahead, to offer that personal wearable message or maybe business cards to hand out years ago, when I embarked on my often messy and trackless (because no one else has lived anyone else’s life) road to adulthood. I remember a religious version that went “Please be patient, God’s not finished with me yet.”
However stated, the sentiment is the same. The process is everything, the path is the work. I started my reset, and unlike Whole Foods, had no budget to guide me, no vision for an outcome, and no time frame, just one foot after the other. I know I have upset people who love me. I know it’s been unkempt and there’s been dust and broken sheet rock pieces and rubble and exposed rebar and burst plumbing and that it’s been inconvenient at times. I am also more aware than ever how each new day is also a renewal and another chance to get it right or be one percent better and love people sweeter and be more courageous and be more content and to say yes to all of it, construction included.
Cicero said “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.” We’re not really ever “finished,” but we have a reset button labeled gratitude.
