On Monday of this week, I got out
of bed at seven o’clock, fed the cats and the dog, let the chickens out of
their coop, then stood in the yard as the sun burst through the clouds hanging
over the river and breathed in deeply the fresh October air. Then I went inside
and poured myself a mug of coffee.
Thankfully, this is not going to
be my last good memory. I’m not going to look back on those twenty minutes of
Monday morning and recognize those as the last moments of my happiness before
my world was changed irrevocably.
Others are not so lucky.
I took my mug of coffee into the
living room and turned on the television to check out the news. The headline on
CNN screaming at me across the bottom of the screen read, “50+ Dead, 200+
Injured In Concert Shooting in Las Vegas”. After watching for a few minutes, I
turned off the TV.
I turned on my phone and opened
up Facebook. The first post on my screen announced that a friend’s mother, in
the late stage of cancer and the early stage of dementia, had died.
I got up and cooked oatmeal,
which I covered in pumpkin seeds, blueberries and milk. I sat down at my dining
room table, overlooking a front yard filled with dappled sunlight, and ate my
breakfast with tears dripping off my chin. I was doing what I always do, what I
enjoy doing, and living my good little life, while yet again, the lives of so
many are changed irrevocably.
Sometimes, without having
survived anything, I feel survivor’s guilt, so on Monday, when the personal and
the universal were twisted up together in a braid of grief and pain, I sat at
the table and pushed back the guilt with gratitude.
Thank you for oatmeal and coffee.
I am grateful for the nourishment and comfort they provide.
Thank you for sunshine and clouds
and wind. I am grateful to live so close to nature.
Thank you for this house. I am
grateful to be sheltered and protected.
Thank you for the cats and the
dog. I am grateful for their companionship.
My gratitude does nothing to stop
the suffering of those in Las Vegas (or Edmonton, or France, or Mayanmar) but expressing
gratefulness has to be, somehow, better than feeling guilty.
In A.J. Jacobs’ 2007 book, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s
Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, he wrote on Day
263 about his growing obsession with being thankful for everything: “It’s an
odd way to live. But also kind of great and powerful. I’ve never before been so
aware of the thousands of little good things, the thousands of things that go
right every day.”
As we approach the long weekend,
we will say “Happy Thanksgiving” a dozen times between now and Monday. Instead
of giving, however, what about living thanks? Perhaps this weekend is a chance
to kickstart a year of being obsessively grateful every single day for all the
little good things.
Thank you for reading this. I’m
grateful for the connection these words create.
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