#81: Gratitude as participation in life.
I choose to be immersed in it all, good and bad.
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I spend a lot of time sharing about how much I love my life…
And overthinking how I share about how much I love my life.
I was reminded of this as I chatted with a cashier expertly jenga-ing my groceries into a brown paper bag.
“How much longer do you have to go for the day?” I asked.
“I only have two hours left. Whew! How about you?”
“Well, um, I’m kinda retired.” I sheepishly shared.
“Retired? You are truly blessed!” he enthused.
On the outside, I nodded vigorously. On the inside, I cringed.
I never know which word to use when describing the things in my life that make me beam: my kids, my travels, my freedom, my passion project, my network of friends and family, the perfect vodka gimlet.
If I am blessed… does that mean a god is blessing me while not blessing others? Why would I possibly deserve that?
If I am lucky… that’s just as bad. Things I didn’t earn make me queasy; things I get and other people don’t get make me nauseous. Lucky feels capricious and unfair.
If I am fortunate… this just feels like a three-syllabled way of saying I’m lucky. It’s lucky with lipstick.
All these words try to explain how I got this phenomenal life. They are looking for a cause that created the effect. But there is no explanation…
And trying to come up with a word that encapsulates the mystery of life feels like trying to package the ocean into a FedEx box. I don’t want to flatten the waves of life into a word, I want to just enjoy the ride.
Where’s the word that can help me do that?
“In effect, I think gratitude allows us to participate more in life.
“We notice the positives more, and that magnifies the pleasures you get from life. Instead of adapting to goodness, we celebrate goodness. We spend so much time watching things — movies, computer screens, sports — but with gratitude we become greater participants in our lives as opposed to spectators.”
- Robert Emmons, professor of psychology, quoted in Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart.
Gratitude, rather than an explanation, is an attitude.
It is a way of relating to the good things of life that helps us experience them more fully, more deeply — no matter if we understand how or why we ended up with them.
I haven’t used the word gratitude a lot in previous TL posts, probably because I didn’t quite understand it. But it’s clearly one of my major transformations from grief: I’m more aware of the positives. I notice them. I allow them in. They have an open invitation to hang out, to band together, to break into song, to cast a brighter light on my life.
Awe, wonder, and joy now:
linger longer for me;
happen more frequently to me;
are activated by a wider array of experiences that, prior to Mike’s death, hadn’t moved the needle on my emotional Richter scale.
It’s like I was re-wired.
I can get a “damn, my life is so amazing” shiver of gratitude from seeing Connor wash his car. From watching Kendall navigate a hairy flight cancellation. From cackling at one of Kavon’s terrible dad jokes.
Seven years ago, I could have thrown in the towel.
I could have kept a laser focus on the fact that my husband died, letting that loss and its entourage of grief, rage, regret, and fear consume me. I’d neither see nor feel anything else. I’d never have anything to be grateful for. I’d never notice anything to be grateful for.
But I discovered early on that noticing and celebrating the good helped me deal with the hard.
I wasn’t trying to plaster over the hard with the good. Instead, the good — baby leaves, deep connection, stumbling upon the world’s best bookshop — became my daily reminders as to why I would indeed survive the hard.
Because there was still good out there. While Mike’s life may have ended, mine hadn’t. I wasn’t going to waste my days when I knew how priceless they were.
So I learned to say “yes” to the kindness of life, no matter the cruelty mixed with it.
Now, I can swing from good to bad and back again. I can allow all of life to permeate me, no matter its texture. I can be knocked off my feet by awe and grief to equal degrees.
That, to me, is living. Even though it’s sometimes hard, it is so very full. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
In gratitude,
This is a beautiful article! And I really appreciate your reflections on blessed/lucky/fortunate... I've struggled with the same idea - feeling blessed AND lucky AND fortunate, but why me? Why not everyone? Is it part of how we're learning to hold grief alongside gratitude, and somehow that is where we find the blessing/luck/fortune? Thank you so much for writing this.
Beautiful, as always ❤️
Grateful to know you!