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Thanksgiving: An I Heart This Manifesto
Thanksgiving: An “I Heart This Manifesto”
IntroductionIn October of 2022, I decided to start a podcast about things that I loved. At the time, this seemed like a not-terrible idea. It turns out that I am the world’s foremost authority on things that I love, so I was actually somewhat qualified to speak on the subject. And seeing how it was focused on my own obsessions,it was also pretty much guaranteed to interest me . But mostly, in a media world populated with trolls, cynics, and conspiracy-pedaling gadflies … well … talking about delightful things seemed like a novelty. Like I said, all in all, a not-so-terrible idea.
The next thing I probably should have asked myself was “Who would want to listen to hours and hours of some random guy talking about the things that he loves?” But I kinda skipped that part.
Instead, I asked myself, “What do I love? What do I want to talk about?” I liked that question better because it meant I got to write a list. And I really love writing lists. In fact, “making lists” is #20 on my list of things that I like, and it will probably end up with its own episode at some point. I put this list in a spreadsheet, because, well, I also really like spreadsheets. (They’re #65).
But now that I Heart This has reached the end of its first season, it seems like it's probably time to ask the existential questions that I avoided asking at the beginning.
Because, y’all know, the last thing the world needs is a new podcast. We’ve got enough “influencers” and “personalities” and hucksters and reminders to like and subscribe. We’ve got enough people feeding the algorithms, thank you very much. What good could it possibly do to add yet another voice to the media circus. It’s like shouting into the void.
Why spend hours of a good life scripting and revising and recording and listening to the same sentence over and over again to edit out all the weird noises my voice makes?
And … why listen? There are a thousand other things you could tune into to right now. You could listen to the news … or someone who will make you laugh … or financial advice … or, y’know, like nine out of ten podcast listeners, you could tune into an endless and moderately disturbing stream of true crime.
So, even it is a bit belatedly, let’s go there. “Who would want to listen to hours and hours of some random guy talking about the things that he loves?” Why gratitude? Why a project like this at all?
Move over Karl Marx. It’s a Thanksgiving I Heart This manifesto.
I’m Ben Lord. You’re listening to “I Heart This.”
First, let me tell you a bit about how I came to be such a gratitude cheerleader in the first place.
In my mid-twenties, I enrolled in a nature study correspondence course for cavemen. Okay, it wasn’t really a course for aspiring cavemen … but it was for people interested in wilderness survival and wild edible plants and stalking around in the woods and getting close to wildlife. So … y’know … cave man stuff. And it really was a good old-fashioned, pre-Zoom correspondence course. Assignments would arrive in my literal IRL mailbox. And I would use these things called stamps to send envelopes full of my work back to the school.
About half of these assignments had me researching local animals and plants in books. But the other half were a kind of in-the-woods practicum. The approach was simple. Go to the same spot in the woods every single day. Sit there until all the things I’d scared away relaxed and returned to going about their business. And then … watch.
Does that sound boring? I guess that sometimes it was. And sometimes it was wicked cold or wet. In June there were swarms of mosquitoes. But not a day went by without something miraculous happening. I found ovenbird nests and watched mother birds feign broken wings to lure me away from their eggs. I watched from a few yards away as a black bear mauled a hemlock sapling to mark its territory. One time, I nearly stepped on an hours-old white-tailed deer fawn, curled into a little oval of spots and legs in the ferns.
But watching was only the first half of the assignment. Every day, before I left my sit spot, I was supposed to give a litany of thanks. I wouldn’t have to say anything out load. And there was nothing to memorize like the catechisms I had to learn in Catholic school. All I had to do was start with the Earth and think of the good things it had given me. Then move out in concentric circles. I’d send thanks to the waters, the crawling things, the plants, the trees, the animals … all the way out to the stars. The guiding principle was to treat everything as if it had a wish to be appreciated.
I wasn’t really looking for a gratitude practice. Mostly I wanted to get good at tracking and and getting close to wildlife. But the effect that this ritual had on my life was unmistakable.
For years, I’d wrestled with painful anxieties … repetitive thoughts that would keep me awake for hours each night, afraid of things I knew to be irrational but that I just couldn’t tune out. And over the course of several months, I began to notice that the little thanksgiving prayer that I said on my little pine stump by the sphagnum bog was providing some breathing room. A daily respite from my own neurotic mind.
I remember one afternoon in particular. I went out with this cloying tension in my gut, feeling like my life would never be right and that there was no escape from the fears that followed me wherever I went. I could hardly pay attention to the woods around me at all. But as I sat on my stump stumbling through my thanksgivings, I was struck by an idea. If I was supposed to “treat everything as if it had a wish to be appreciated,” then wouldn’t that also include my fears. Was there even a reason to be thankful for something so miserable? And even if there was, could I do it? Could I find it in myself to be thankful about something I just wished … so badly … to go away.
The answer, it turned out, was ‘no.’ on both counts.
The thought didn’t make any of the fears disappear. But they did allow me this moment where I could see more than just my anxieties … a moment where I could be both anxious and grateful at the same time.
Some years later, while on a wilderness survival trip in the high altitude deserts of southern Utah, I leaned on years of gratitude practice, as I faced thirst and hunger and cold. On days when every step felt impossible, I found myself turning my mind explicitly to thankfulness. I would intentionally imagine how much worse my situation could be. And through that, I could feel the discomfort ease. I would turn my eyes to the small beauties. The cacti and birds for whom thirst and hunger were ever-present.
I remember one evening crawling out of the pile of pine needles that was my only bed to pee. The sun had not yet set, but the clouds were thick with distant storm, and everything had this odd grey light. And I kept thinking of Laura, two thousand miles away and pregnant with our first child. Thunder rumbled and I thought of how fatherhood, was, for me, like the threat of that impending storm. I had so many things I wanted to do in life. And I was afraid of the sacrifices that being a parent would entail. What things would I have to give up? Was I ready to do this biggest, most commonplace thing? And looked at the pine trees in that eerie light as if they would somehow give me the answer. A bolt of lightning flashed to the west. And at first, I thought that the grumbling buzz that I heard was thunder.
But the sound swooped down over my shoulder like a helicopter. And there, just inches from my nose was a hummingbird, its long needle of a beak pointed right at my face. It was so close, I could feel the air thrown from its wings against my cheek, and I looked into its tiny black eye.
It must have been only a few seconds, but it felt like an hour. That hummingbird hovered face-to-face with me like it was some kind of messenger. And all I could think about was the baby girl who, in a few short months, would change everything about my life.
And then it was gone.
My friends, the world is a big and mysterious place, and I cannot pretend to understand what happened that night or what it had to do with parenthood, but when I packed my few belongings and headed out the next day at noon, I knew that I was ready to be a dad.
I know that in a previous episode of I Heart This, I’ve told a version of this story--how upon my return to civilization and to home and to family, the fears that had dogged me for years seem to have lost their power over me. They were still there, of course, but I had learned that I could carry them.
This too, I think, was due to a kind of thankfulness. Those weeks in the desert, when I had done without so much, helped me to see the abundance of my everyday life for what it was. My tiny ramshackle house was so warm and so bright. The water was hot at the turn of a knob. There were people there who loved me. I was rich beyond measure. I had walked in the footsteps of our human ancestors for only a few weeks, but that was all it took to see the extravagance of modern life for what it is. Gratitude wasn’t just a way to endure hardships or soothe anxiety. It was the secret to seeing the world for what it really was.
Gratitude is kind of a thing in certain circles right now. It’s not like a Harry-Potter-like sensation or anything, but gratitude evangelists have carved out their own little pop culture niche. There are books and TED talks and the occasional inspirational quotes that make their rounds in the social media meme confetti. There are several reasons that people tout for cultivating an attitude of thankfulness. But most of the discourse centers around one big reason, the promise that gratitude makes you happy.
In a much-cited 2003 study, Robert Emmons et al. asked their subjects to write stuff down in a journal. They asked some to write down five things that they were thankful for, others to write down five hassles, others to write just five major events from the week. They did this for ten weeks, and at the end of each week, the subjects reported on a whole battery of things: their life satisfaction, their health, etc. And what did they find? Not just that the gratitude-journalers said they were happier, but they also said that they had fewer headaches and coughs, fewer symptoms of any kind. They even reported that they did more exercise. Other studies have replicated these results.
In one of them, Martin Seligman compared a battery of different happiness interventions. His sample included more than 400 people. (And, incidentally, their control assignment, to write about early memories, was very clever.) The intervention with, by far, the greatest effect was for a subject to write and deliver a letter of appreciation and thanks to someone who had been kind to them. Even a month later, without any other interventions, the letter-writers still reported being happier than any of the other groups.
There’s a growing body of such studies, and they’ve led some people to claim that a regular gratitude practice is a kind of happiness panacea, a good life wonder drug. But… it’s devilishly hard not to fool yourself about such things. There are placebo effects. The line between correlation and causation is often unclear. And how does someone really measure happiness? It is easy to exaggerate and over extrapolate.
Real progress has been made in positive psychology, but no one has yet found a secret to happiness. Mostly, and quite usefully, psychologists have corroborated common sense: Exercise, get enough sleep, spend time with friends, and be grateful for the good things you have. It’s a mundane list … But gratitude is on that list! Based on the evidence, it really does seem that a regular habit of being grateful for your blessings will make you happier.
The evidence might be limited. But, limited evidence is all we’ve got. And I, for one, am not about to sit around and wait for certainty that will never come. Thankfulness seems as likely as anything to make me happy. And it seems to be a surer bet for my long-term well-being than making more money, nabbing more likes or followers, getting nicer things … surer even than finding a loving romantic partner.
In short, gratitude seems to be a critical ingredient to a happy life.
But, hold on just a second there, Mr. crunchy granola Vermont guy! You might live in your little hippy, yoga commune. Happy or not, the rest of us have other things to do besides updating our gratitude journals. Sitting in the woods and doing your little Thanksgiving ritual isn’t going to pay the bills or keep the lights on. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the world outside your little Christmas ski village is in trouble. Fascist and demagogues are rising to power around the world. Democracy is eroding. The rich are getting richer on the backs of the poor. Even the Earth systems that our whole civilization relies on are imploding. And the suits who are in charge do little more than wave their arms and make empty promises.
What if gratitude is a distraction from the fact that shit is going down? What if the bumper sticker is right? If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.
Are you going to be just another voice in the chorus of toxic positivity that tells everyone to “consider their own self-care” while simultaneously assigning them more uncompensated responsibilities? That is the kind of thing that shames people for not being happy and cheery all the time… for not being grateful enough.
‘Cause news flash, Pollyanna, we shouldn’t have to be glad all the time. Sometimes we have really good reasons to NOT be grateful. To complain about things that really ARE unfair. And you don’t get to tell other people, especially people who’ve inherited centuries of disadvantage, that they should be “grateful for what they have.”
And, yeah, I wouldn’t argue with any of that. They are all good cautions. But I would say this.
I once attended a conference of yoga teachers who had gathered to talk about the environmental disaster. Everyone there was terribly earnest in their concerns. Some were angry. Some were afraid. Some were hopeful. Some were full of despair. Some people seemed to want to get beyond the feelings and just get down to work … to do something, though it was seldom clear just what exactly that was. But the voice that struck me most was of one teacher who had, only a few months before, sat by her mother’s hospice bed and watched her die. And amidst all of the discussion of what to do about an ill and maybe even dying earth, she said … very quietly … when my mom was dying … I did what I could to make her comfortable and then I held her hand … and I told her that I loved her … even when she couldn’t hear.
Gratitude isn’t an emotional eraser. It’s never going to replace grief or our anger. But it can exist right alongside them. Inviting thankfulness into our hearts doesn’t mean that the other guests have to leave.
And there is no reason to be inauthentic about that. I don’t look for reasons I “should” be grateful. I just pay attention to what I am grateful for. There are lots of moments when I’m too sad or grumpy to sing the praises of anything … And that’s okay … But it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye out for blessings when the come.
Nor do I think it’s my place to tell other people that they “should” be grateful. Hell, if I know what anyone should do.
Yes, there is work to do. Yes, the world needs us. Maybe it even needs our righteous anger and our complaints. But it also needs our admiration. And it needs us to hold its hand … and remember the good things that it has done for us, and for us to tell it we love it … whether it can hear us or not.
So, yes, I do believe that paying attention to and praising the things we love is good for us, even in a world that needs more than just our gratitude. But there are other, and I think, more important reasons to live a life of thanksgiving. Happiness is wonderful. But most of us would give it up for something greater. People do it all the time--for the prosperity of their children, for creative work that will enrich the lives of others, for faith, for justice … for love. Meaning trumps happiness.
Several years ago, I wouldn’t have given much thought to this. But since then, I have seen something that makes “meaning” impossible to ignore. A widespread and spreading despair among the teens that I work with. I see it in their faces. But it isn’t something that I need to infer. They are frank about their hopelessness. More kids than ever come from homes damaged by drug addiction. They live in a world that seems to be quickly unraveling, and the adults who hold the reigns seem unable or unwilling to try and hold it together. They tell me things like, “Human destroy everything they touch.” “Nobody’s going to stop it as long as there’s money to be made.” and worst of all “It doesn’t matter, the world I want to live in will be gone by the time I get there.”
And then they turn their faces back to the screens of their phones and feed that despair with news of the latest outrage, the latest shooting, the latest war.
Those kids need meaning right now. Desperately. And we are experiencing a global deficit of it--right at a time when the last thing we can least afford the paralysis it brings. Where do we find the meaning we so desperately need.
I took a few philosophy classes in college. But instead of following the normal sequence and starting with a survey course, I skipped all of the pre-requisites and jumped straight into classes on Heidegger and Wittgenstein. I mean, what pre-requisites did you really need for a philosophy class? I’d had some pretty intense conversations with my scouting buddies. Like--
“Hey, man, did you ever think about the fact that right now there might be some aliens from that star looking up at our sun and wondering whether there might be alien life? Think about it.”
“Dude. That’s deep.”
“Hey, pull my finger.”
Needless to say, when I got into said classes, I was clearly in over my head. I’d expected to be talk about how to live a good life and what its meaning might be. But mostly we talked about the nature of being and time, rules of formal and...
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By Ben LordThanksgiving: An “I Heart This Manifesto”
IntroductionIn October of 2022, I decided to start a podcast about things that I loved. At the time, this seemed like a not-terrible idea. It turns out that I am the world’s foremost authority on things that I love, so I was actually somewhat qualified to speak on the subject. And seeing how it was focused on my own obsessions,it was also pretty much guaranteed to interest me . But mostly, in a media world populated with trolls, cynics, and conspiracy-pedaling gadflies … well … talking about delightful things seemed like a novelty. Like I said, all in all, a not-so-terrible idea.
The next thing I probably should have asked myself was “Who would want to listen to hours and hours of some random guy talking about the things that he loves?” But I kinda skipped that part.
Instead, I asked myself, “What do I love? What do I want to talk about?” I liked that question better because it meant I got to write a list. And I really love writing lists. In fact, “making lists” is #20 on my list of things that I like, and it will probably end up with its own episode at some point. I put this list in a spreadsheet, because, well, I also really like spreadsheets. (They’re #65).
But now that I Heart This has reached the end of its first season, it seems like it's probably time to ask the existential questions that I avoided asking at the beginning.
Because, y’all know, the last thing the world needs is a new podcast. We’ve got enough “influencers” and “personalities” and hucksters and reminders to like and subscribe. We’ve got enough people feeding the algorithms, thank you very much. What good could it possibly do to add yet another voice to the media circus. It’s like shouting into the void.
Why spend hours of a good life scripting and revising and recording and listening to the same sentence over and over again to edit out all the weird noises my voice makes?
And … why listen? There are a thousand other things you could tune into to right now. You could listen to the news … or someone who will make you laugh … or financial advice … or, y’know, like nine out of ten podcast listeners, you could tune into an endless and moderately disturbing stream of true crime.
So, even it is a bit belatedly, let’s go there. “Who would want to listen to hours and hours of some random guy talking about the things that he loves?” Why gratitude? Why a project like this at all?
Move over Karl Marx. It’s a Thanksgiving I Heart This manifesto.
I’m Ben Lord. You’re listening to “I Heart This.”
First, let me tell you a bit about how I came to be such a gratitude cheerleader in the first place.
In my mid-twenties, I enrolled in a nature study correspondence course for cavemen. Okay, it wasn’t really a course for aspiring cavemen … but it was for people interested in wilderness survival and wild edible plants and stalking around in the woods and getting close to wildlife. So … y’know … cave man stuff. And it really was a good old-fashioned, pre-Zoom correspondence course. Assignments would arrive in my literal IRL mailbox. And I would use these things called stamps to send envelopes full of my work back to the school.
About half of these assignments had me researching local animals and plants in books. But the other half were a kind of in-the-woods practicum. The approach was simple. Go to the same spot in the woods every single day. Sit there until all the things I’d scared away relaxed and returned to going about their business. And then … watch.
Does that sound boring? I guess that sometimes it was. And sometimes it was wicked cold or wet. In June there were swarms of mosquitoes. But not a day went by without something miraculous happening. I found ovenbird nests and watched mother birds feign broken wings to lure me away from their eggs. I watched from a few yards away as a black bear mauled a hemlock sapling to mark its territory. One time, I nearly stepped on an hours-old white-tailed deer fawn, curled into a little oval of spots and legs in the ferns.
But watching was only the first half of the assignment. Every day, before I left my sit spot, I was supposed to give a litany of thanks. I wouldn’t have to say anything out load. And there was nothing to memorize like the catechisms I had to learn in Catholic school. All I had to do was start with the Earth and think of the good things it had given me. Then move out in concentric circles. I’d send thanks to the waters, the crawling things, the plants, the trees, the animals … all the way out to the stars. The guiding principle was to treat everything as if it had a wish to be appreciated.
I wasn’t really looking for a gratitude practice. Mostly I wanted to get good at tracking and and getting close to wildlife. But the effect that this ritual had on my life was unmistakable.
For years, I’d wrestled with painful anxieties … repetitive thoughts that would keep me awake for hours each night, afraid of things I knew to be irrational but that I just couldn’t tune out. And over the course of several months, I began to notice that the little thanksgiving prayer that I said on my little pine stump by the sphagnum bog was providing some breathing room. A daily respite from my own neurotic mind.
I remember one afternoon in particular. I went out with this cloying tension in my gut, feeling like my life would never be right and that there was no escape from the fears that followed me wherever I went. I could hardly pay attention to the woods around me at all. But as I sat on my stump stumbling through my thanksgivings, I was struck by an idea. If I was supposed to “treat everything as if it had a wish to be appreciated,” then wouldn’t that also include my fears. Was there even a reason to be thankful for something so miserable? And even if there was, could I do it? Could I find it in myself to be thankful about something I just wished … so badly … to go away.
The answer, it turned out, was ‘no.’ on both counts.
The thought didn’t make any of the fears disappear. But they did allow me this moment where I could see more than just my anxieties … a moment where I could be both anxious and grateful at the same time.
Some years later, while on a wilderness survival trip in the high altitude deserts of southern Utah, I leaned on years of gratitude practice, as I faced thirst and hunger and cold. On days when every step felt impossible, I found myself turning my mind explicitly to thankfulness. I would intentionally imagine how much worse my situation could be. And through that, I could feel the discomfort ease. I would turn my eyes to the small beauties. The cacti and birds for whom thirst and hunger were ever-present.
I remember one evening crawling out of the pile of pine needles that was my only bed to pee. The sun had not yet set, but the clouds were thick with distant storm, and everything had this odd grey light. And I kept thinking of Laura, two thousand miles away and pregnant with our first child. Thunder rumbled and I thought of how fatherhood, was, for me, like the threat of that impending storm. I had so many things I wanted to do in life. And I was afraid of the sacrifices that being a parent would entail. What things would I have to give up? Was I ready to do this biggest, most commonplace thing? And looked at the pine trees in that eerie light as if they would somehow give me the answer. A bolt of lightning flashed to the west. And at first, I thought that the grumbling buzz that I heard was thunder.
But the sound swooped down over my shoulder like a helicopter. And there, just inches from my nose was a hummingbird, its long needle of a beak pointed right at my face. It was so close, I could feel the air thrown from its wings against my cheek, and I looked into its tiny black eye.
It must have been only a few seconds, but it felt like an hour. That hummingbird hovered face-to-face with me like it was some kind of messenger. And all I could think about was the baby girl who, in a few short months, would change everything about my life.
And then it was gone.
My friends, the world is a big and mysterious place, and I cannot pretend to understand what happened that night or what it had to do with parenthood, but when I packed my few belongings and headed out the next day at noon, I knew that I was ready to be a dad.
I know that in a previous episode of I Heart This, I’ve told a version of this story--how upon my return to civilization and to home and to family, the fears that had dogged me for years seem to have lost their power over me. They were still there, of course, but I had learned that I could carry them.
This too, I think, was due to a kind of thankfulness. Those weeks in the desert, when I had done without so much, helped me to see the abundance of my everyday life for what it was. My tiny ramshackle house was so warm and so bright. The water was hot at the turn of a knob. There were people there who loved me. I was rich beyond measure. I had walked in the footsteps of our human ancestors for only a few weeks, but that was all it took to see the extravagance of modern life for what it is. Gratitude wasn’t just a way to endure hardships or soothe anxiety. It was the secret to seeing the world for what it really was.
Gratitude is kind of a thing in certain circles right now. It’s not like a Harry-Potter-like sensation or anything, but gratitude evangelists have carved out their own little pop culture niche. There are books and TED talks and the occasional inspirational quotes that make their rounds in the social media meme confetti. There are several reasons that people tout for cultivating an attitude of thankfulness. But most of the discourse centers around one big reason, the promise that gratitude makes you happy.
In a much-cited 2003 study, Robert Emmons et al. asked their subjects to write stuff down in a journal. They asked some to write down five things that they were thankful for, others to write down five hassles, others to write just five major events from the week. They did this for ten weeks, and at the end of each week, the subjects reported on a whole battery of things: their life satisfaction, their health, etc. And what did they find? Not just that the gratitude-journalers said they were happier, but they also said that they had fewer headaches and coughs, fewer symptoms of any kind. They even reported that they did more exercise. Other studies have replicated these results.
In one of them, Martin Seligman compared a battery of different happiness interventions. His sample included more than 400 people. (And, incidentally, their control assignment, to write about early memories, was very clever.) The intervention with, by far, the greatest effect was for a subject to write and deliver a letter of appreciation and thanks to someone who had been kind to them. Even a month later, without any other interventions, the letter-writers still reported being happier than any of the other groups.
There’s a growing body of such studies, and they’ve led some people to claim that a regular gratitude practice is a kind of happiness panacea, a good life wonder drug. But… it’s devilishly hard not to fool yourself about such things. There are placebo effects. The line between correlation and causation is often unclear. And how does someone really measure happiness? It is easy to exaggerate and over extrapolate.
Real progress has been made in positive psychology, but no one has yet found a secret to happiness. Mostly, and quite usefully, psychologists have corroborated common sense: Exercise, get enough sleep, spend time with friends, and be grateful for the good things you have. It’s a mundane list … But gratitude is on that list! Based on the evidence, it really does seem that a regular habit of being grateful for your blessings will make you happier.
The evidence might be limited. But, limited evidence is all we’ve got. And I, for one, am not about to sit around and wait for certainty that will never come. Thankfulness seems as likely as anything to make me happy. And it seems to be a surer bet for my long-term well-being than making more money, nabbing more likes or followers, getting nicer things … surer even than finding a loving romantic partner.
In short, gratitude seems to be a critical ingredient to a happy life.
But, hold on just a second there, Mr. crunchy granola Vermont guy! You might live in your little hippy, yoga commune. Happy or not, the rest of us have other things to do besides updating our gratitude journals. Sitting in the woods and doing your little Thanksgiving ritual isn’t going to pay the bills or keep the lights on. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the world outside your little Christmas ski village is in trouble. Fascist and demagogues are rising to power around the world. Democracy is eroding. The rich are getting richer on the backs of the poor. Even the Earth systems that our whole civilization relies on are imploding. And the suits who are in charge do little more than wave their arms and make empty promises.
What if gratitude is a distraction from the fact that shit is going down? What if the bumper sticker is right? If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.
Are you going to be just another voice in the chorus of toxic positivity that tells everyone to “consider their own self-care” while simultaneously assigning them more uncompensated responsibilities? That is the kind of thing that shames people for not being happy and cheery all the time… for not being grateful enough.
‘Cause news flash, Pollyanna, we shouldn’t have to be glad all the time. Sometimes we have really good reasons to NOT be grateful. To complain about things that really ARE unfair. And you don’t get to tell other people, especially people who’ve inherited centuries of disadvantage, that they should be “grateful for what they have.”
And, yeah, I wouldn’t argue with any of that. They are all good cautions. But I would say this.
I once attended a conference of yoga teachers who had gathered to talk about the environmental disaster. Everyone there was terribly earnest in their concerns. Some were angry. Some were afraid. Some were hopeful. Some were full of despair. Some people seemed to want to get beyond the feelings and just get down to work … to do something, though it was seldom clear just what exactly that was. But the voice that struck me most was of one teacher who had, only a few months before, sat by her mother’s hospice bed and watched her die. And amidst all of the discussion of what to do about an ill and maybe even dying earth, she said … very quietly … when my mom was dying … I did what I could to make her comfortable and then I held her hand … and I told her that I loved her … even when she couldn’t hear.
Gratitude isn’t an emotional eraser. It’s never going to replace grief or our anger. But it can exist right alongside them. Inviting thankfulness into our hearts doesn’t mean that the other guests have to leave.
And there is no reason to be inauthentic about that. I don’t look for reasons I “should” be grateful. I just pay attention to what I am grateful for. There are lots of moments when I’m too sad or grumpy to sing the praises of anything … And that’s okay … But it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye out for blessings when the come.
Nor do I think it’s my place to tell other people that they “should” be grateful. Hell, if I know what anyone should do.
Yes, there is work to do. Yes, the world needs us. Maybe it even needs our righteous anger and our complaints. But it also needs our admiration. And it needs us to hold its hand … and remember the good things that it has done for us, and for us to tell it we love it … whether it can hear us or not.
So, yes, I do believe that paying attention to and praising the things we love is good for us, even in a world that needs more than just our gratitude. But there are other, and I think, more important reasons to live a life of thanksgiving. Happiness is wonderful. But most of us would give it up for something greater. People do it all the time--for the prosperity of their children, for creative work that will enrich the lives of others, for faith, for justice … for love. Meaning trumps happiness.
Several years ago, I wouldn’t have given much thought to this. But since then, I have seen something that makes “meaning” impossible to ignore. A widespread and spreading despair among the teens that I work with. I see it in their faces. But it isn’t something that I need to infer. They are frank about their hopelessness. More kids than ever come from homes damaged by drug addiction. They live in a world that seems to be quickly unraveling, and the adults who hold the reigns seem unable or unwilling to try and hold it together. They tell me things like, “Human destroy everything they touch.” “Nobody’s going to stop it as long as there’s money to be made.” and worst of all “It doesn’t matter, the world I want to live in will be gone by the time I get there.”
And then they turn their faces back to the screens of their phones and feed that despair with news of the latest outrage, the latest shooting, the latest war.
Those kids need meaning right now. Desperately. And we are experiencing a global deficit of it--right at a time when the last thing we can least afford the paralysis it brings. Where do we find the meaning we so desperately need.
I took a few philosophy classes in college. But instead of following the normal sequence and starting with a survey course, I skipped all of the pre-requisites and jumped straight into classes on Heidegger and Wittgenstein. I mean, what pre-requisites did you really need for a philosophy class? I’d had some pretty intense conversations with my scouting buddies. Like--
“Hey, man, did you ever think about the fact that right now there might be some aliens from that star looking up at our sun and wondering whether there might be alien life? Think about it.”
“Dude. That’s deep.”
“Hey, pull my finger.”
Needless to say, when I got into said classes, I was clearly in over my head. I’d expected to be talk about how to live a good life and what its meaning might be. But mostly we talked about the nature of being and time, rules of formal and...