Gratitude

I once had a conversation with someone I knew in passing. She was a guest at a hotel where I worked. We had both had a frustrating day and were commiserating a bit. As the conversation was finishing up she looked at me and said, “well, there’s always something to be thankful for.” It was just a random sentence in one of thousands on conversations I had in my life at that point.

I have never forgotten it.

More importantly, it changed how I viewed life, if only ever so slightly. See, at that time in my life I was not in the best place. I spent a lot of time thinking about what I didn’t have. In other words, I bitched a lot about my circumstances. None of that is worth getting into here. The point was that I just wasn’t happy. Worse yet, I wallowed in it and spent a great deal of time feeling sorry for myself. That conversation with the hotel guest hit me in a way I did not expect. I could have blown it off and pretended she didn’t know what she was talking about. I’m not sure why I didn’t. But I’ll tell you this, it had such and impression on me that I can still remember tiny little details from that moment like it was yesterday. I can’t explain it. Sometimes things land in a way that sticks. When it happens to you just remember it and learn from it.

What I learned that day was to start being grateful for what I had. I began to keep a gratitude journal. Every night before I went to bed I would write something in it that I was thankful for that day. I didn’t make a big thing out of it. Just a few seconds to write one thing on the list. It started out pretty easy. You can fill out a couple of weeks worth of it with the usual stuff: you’re healthy, you have a job, you aren’t hungry, etc. Even on a bad day there is some low hanging fruit to plug in the list so you can fall asleep having completed your task.

However, after a couple of weeks it gets harder. You feel like it shouldn’t. Even if you aren’t exactly happy you know your life isn’t a mess, mostly for all the reasons you listed each night before. But you’ve used up all the easy stuff. Now you have to think about it a little harder. What made you happy today? Even If the day was rotten there had to be something. So now you relive your day in snapshots, searching for the smallest thing so that you can go to sleep. For a moment you think you can skip it tonight. You’ve done it for weeks. You get it. Life isn’t the bad. Turn the light off and call it a night.

But you don’t. For reasons you don’t fully understand you have to do this. Maybe it’s that you made yourself a promise. Somehow this idea has gotten ahold of you and you can’t let it go. It’s like there’s a lesson that you don’t understand. You’re smart enough to know it’s there but not smart enough to know what it is. But as your frustration builds you tell yourself this is a simple thing. You should be able to find something. A couple of possibilities come but they seem so small. That person who let you cut in that long line at the store. The little boy at the post office who said your sunglasses “looked cool”. Jesus. Can you really put that down? “Cool sunglasses” sounds so stupid on a list of things that’s supposed to mean something. This is changing your life, right? But you’re tired and this is starting to annoy you. Fine. “Cool sunglasses” it is. You’re going to bed.

The next night you sit down to write again. You have a good one. You’re anxious to put it in the journal and show the universe just how smart you are. Then you look down and see it.

“Cool sunglasses”

Still feel smart? There’s some life changing wisdom for ya. How could you have written something so small in a journal that’s supposed to mean so much? It was funny though, the way that kid said “cooool”. Then his mom laughed a little and smiled. You fist bumped him and he thought it was funny. You smile remembering it. What were you going to write tonight? It was important and now you can’t recall what it was. But you’re smiling about something that happened yesterday in the span of 15 seconds. That feels good in a way you didn’t even notice yesterday. So you write “random giggles” in your book and turn in for the night. And just before you fall asleep it hits you that maybe this was the lesson all along. Maybe the important part was not necessarily finding some profound or thoughtful insight to add. Maybe it’s that there are a lot of little things to be grateful for each day. Worse yet, you missed them because you were busy or feeling sorry for yourself. You didn’t get it until you made yourself look.

I don’t keep a gratitude journal anymore. At least not on paper. But every day I make sure that I take the time to be grateful for something. Many times it’s helped me appreciate it while it’s happening. I feel like it’s made me a lot happier with life in general. Most importantly, it has made me stop and enjoy the smallest moment, many of which involve you boys. Parents always say that the time with their kids flies by. It does. But because someone I barely knew said something random to me years ago it has taken me on a path to squeeze as much out of the best moments with you boys. I live those moments with you instead of flying through them to get to the next one.

So I hope that you will learn to be grateful. It’s not as easy as it sounds. It takes some discipline at first. You train yourself to do it. But it’s worth it. Oh, you’ll have bad days. You’ll have times when you wonder why something bad or even awful happened to you. Gratitude will be the last thing on your mind at times like that. That’s ok. Some things we just have to slog through. Just understand that every experience is a chance to learn something. And once you teach yourself to be grateful for what you have, no matter how small, you may find that those difficult times are much easier to endure. You may even find that you are stronger than your ever knew. And that is always something to be grateful for.