Close to 2023
The new year will soon be upon us. As one often does as a new calendar year approaches, I have thought about the current state of my life. We all have these thoughts, at least I hope we do. I’m referring to the current state of the self-type thoughts. Where am I today and am I okay with that?
No matter how hard I try, there is no use in relinquishing the desires for a better life, a life with more. What exactly, I do not know. But it’s become clear to me my mind may never rest if there’s not a greener and more fertile hill to be found beyond the one I currently stand. The mind and its creations are never satiated it appears. I seem to be always hungry for progress, conquest, and novelty.
Yet, in moments of stillness and rumination, I see that there is nothing more that I can gain in this mortal life of mine. Of course, there are facets of life I wish to experience like love, parenthood, being the cool grandfather, etc. But the painfully obvious realization is that the universe has gifted me completion, all the necessary materials to build a beautiful and happy life as long as I see and pick up the pieces. I have lived a magical life. The most I can tell you about war, abject poverty, hunger, violence, etc. are from books. If life was a lottery, then I surely have a winning ticket, at least one of them.
As I’ve written this collection, I have come to believe that gratitude is expressed or rather comes if the feeling manifests itself passively, in two ways. First, gratitude is felt following the knowledge that your life is better than someone else’s, that you have something that he or she doesn’t. In this way, gratitude is indeed relative. I feel elevated as I peek below and observe someone in a worse situation than me. I once witnessed and walked the streets of a slum in Peru (though, I could still find harrowing living conditions in many first-world nations). After that experience, gratitude, specifically gratitude for living comfortably in the United States, surged within me. I looked down and I felt up.
The second form of gratitude is gratitude as the ideal of itself. The second gratitude is being grateful absolutely, for appreciating what is there. It’s the appreciation of what the present holds instead of what could and could not have been given and gained. Carrying on our previous example, I should have long ago been truly grateful for living in the U.S., but I had been blind or rather eyes too wide on what more I could get out of life.
Gratitude by comparison is a precursor to absolute gratitude. I think at some point when I noticed how many comparisons I could make, causing myself to feel gratitude upon the knowledge of suffering I knew existed but did not know, I saw that the list was infinite. I am healthy, others are ill. I am safe, others are persecuted. I am loved, others are neglected. Ad infinitum. My fortune and not just the monetary kind is inordinate. Life did not have to be this good. Life doesn’t have to be any way in fact. And yet, here I am, writing to the internet in a warm sheltered apartment. I thank the universe for my fortune. I thank all the gods. I thank all the people who made life, my life, so fantastic, so perfect.
I do not believe I would experience moments of absolute gratitude had I not internalized how lucky I am compared to those less lucky. The first form of gratitude primes the second. Today, I am grateful to be an American period. Today, as the sun rose at dawn, I was grateful. As a gentle and cool breeze brushed my skin, I was grateful. As I grabbed a beer with my friends, I was grateful. As I write to an open, free, odd, and wonderous internet, I am grateful.
I look forward to 2024 and what my life has in store. But I suppose what I better say is that I am grateful now, for everything. Thank you.
