Gratitude.
Let me tell you what I think about gratitude: it's completely artificial. There's nothing natural about it. A squirrel doesn't eat a nut and think "I am so grateful for this nut". All it knows is nut.
All I know is nut.
All I know is feel bad.
Gratitude. How many scoff at it? Them and their little ungrateful hearts and minds. I can hear them scoffing from afar. Someone should hand them a scoff drop. That's a pun. OK we've told our joke, we can be serious now.
Gratitude.
No such thing. It's one of countless concepts that exist only to human beings but that doesn't make it non-existent. What I'm trying to say is this:
If you've heard me speak for more than a few minutes you'll know how I feel about gratitude and the brain. The brain is hardwired to carve into stone any misfortune to keep it from happening again. There is an evolutionary advantage in remembering the bad things that happened to you so you can avoid them. Thus, we must make a point out of being grateful for the things we have to feel grateful about.
This can be that. This thing I'm writing right here. Possibly reading aloud to you.
I can do that. Gratitude meditations. I can do them. It's quite possible that I've been doing them while you're speaking to me. You're going on about whatever the hell you think it is that's so important to you and there I am feeling grateful about something. Hell, I could even be doing it right now. I'm not. Probably. But if I were, you'd have no idea whether or not I was or wasn't.
I feel grateful.
I'll expound.
You remember what I said before about the hardwired brain? Well, I have a brain. I like my brain but a brain it is. That is to say it carves into stone all the terrible things that have happened to me. That's what I really want to write about. The trauma.I don't think I've had a particularly hard life but there are things that have happened to me that continue to happen. I've suffered vicariously through the terrible things that befell people I care about deeply. I don't need to do that, but I do. I grew up some wacky Christian millenarian. We don't have to talk about it.
What I know more than anything is that I'm older now and I don't want to hear about anything bad that happened to anyone ever again. Some people have their trauma laid out on serving platters like finger sandwiches for you to snack on and all they ask for in return is sympathy and some understanding that if they're not where they should be in life it's because of the bad things that have happened to them. What they don't tell you is that they're not interested in your finger sandwiches and that they're not willing to offer the same understanding. I've had conversations that felt like the other party was just dying to one-up me about whatever it was they had been through.
I surrender.
Take it.
Whatever I've been through wasn't so bad because I'm here with you all. I said something like this out loud at work once. Somebody was bitching about being at work. I think I asked some legitimate question like 'what's your favorite school subject' and they said 'recess'. I know it's work and work sucks but also and more importantly if there's somewhere else you would rather be I suggest you run there and never come back.
What I said to this miserable son of a bitch was some version of this: I know for a fact that at some point in the next week I will experience something so joyous, so divine, so wonderful, that it will have made everything I have gone through from the dawn of man to date somehow worth it.
I mean that.
I think that's a healthy way to think.
In 1999 someone I was at college with wondered "what if we wake up every day with a collection of memories that we think are ours but aren't?" That really stuck with me. What if all my trauma is just pictures in a book that might not even be mine? Memory is tricky. My childhood was mostly analogue up until my teenage years. I believe in my heart most everything not archived digitally will someday be lost. More on that later, maybe.
I guess I can talk a lot of shit about gratitude because I'm in love, but believe me when I say the circumstances of this love would leave a lot to be desired for most people and it puts me at odds with them and to me it is a love and pure and brilliant as a pure carbon crystal and to them it is some great capitulation in the war against loneliness. We don't have to talk about it. The important thing here is that it was no accident. I didn't accidentally become who I am and I didn't accidentally accept love and while I have known failure and missed opportunity I have also known success. One of my favorite thing's I've ever thought is this: love isn't rare, people who know what to do with it are. I believe that. I believe that very much because I almost left this love to die wailing in the rain like an abandoned infant. I didn't. I accepted grace. I worked on it.
I'm really happy about that. Grateful, even.
When I left my last relationship I didn't think to myself "Sure am glad I have failed at love" I thought "I am glad I now have the opportunity to find something better for myself".
Wait, there's more.
I wish I failed more. I wish I tried and failed but I was scared to fail. I didn't want my fears confirmed. As long as I never tried I would never have to know failure but if I could do it all over I would fail five times a day for as long as I lived. Let me be clear: I have very few regrets. It is not the lack of regret that has given me gratitude it is my gratitude that has expunged my regret.
Shame, embarrassment, humility, anger (oh god, so much anger). Each of these, no stranger to me. But what is the thing that has crippled my will? What is the thing that has kept me from investing my time and energy? Where do you spend your blood and is the blood you spend lost forever? How do you heal? Do you know how to heal? What is the thing that has kept you from being the most you that you have ever been and why haven't you sawn it off and tossed it into the fire?
Greater minds than mine have mused upon risk/reward. The votes are in. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. That's what this is about.
Look at the room I'm in. I'm imagining I'm reading this aloud to several people, most of whom I've just met in the past two years? I'm almost 44. I have known lots of people. Who the hell are you to think you mean anything to me? We're coworkers? I've worked with more people than I'll ever remember. I don't need you. Any of you could drop dead at any minute and the sadness would come and go.
Which is to say:
I am so fucking happy. I have found so much love in this world. Most of it is no longer with me. That's ok. Love isn't rare, but people who know what to do with it are. I can say truly that I have love in me for anyone hearing me speak these words. I do. Fuck it. Take my blood, I have plenty. I'm talking to you directly and I'm going to stop and look you in the eye and say your name. Starting from the left.
I just handed you blood. How do you feel? You don't need to know what to do with it. You shouldn't really do anything with it. It's a gesture. It's a metaphor. I don't need anything back. I promise. You can leave it on the train, you can put it in a bag and forget to put it in your new bag and give the old bag to Goodwill.
I'm telling you that I love you and I can say that because it just gives me more to be grateful for.
I'm not everybody's favorite. People have reasons to not like me and they're entitled to those reasons the way a pack rat is entitled to a palace of filth. That sounds judgmental and it is. I would not begrudge anyone their opinion.
Let me say some more things:
There's just a good a chance that I am somebody's version of the worst person in the world.
There's someone out there who would rather burn alive than walk a mile in my shoes.
but also
There's more than a good chance someone I care about cares about me just as much as I care about them and while I can never prove that beyond their word I can accept it and act as if it's true.
Also, I could be living out someone's fantasy. Someone could be aching to trade places with me.
I'm okay with who I am. I'm more than okay with who I am. I like me. I love me. I think I'm worthy of love and I thought that before I had it but to be honest I thought it more every time I found it.
I'm gonna wrap it up now.
This is the work.
Scour the trash heap for shiny bits and turn them into jewelry for people you care for.
Fail every day.
Do not deprive the world of you and do not deprive yourself of the world.
The hate will make itself known. You must find love.
The work is if there is something in your life you do not have you must make your life a place where the thing you want can survive. If you have desire let it motivate you to act.
The worst thing to do is nothing.
Amen.
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