The Action of Thanks

 

When I woke up this morning, I struggled to clear some phlegm from my throat – and I was grateful to have awoken once again, thankful for a throat to clear.

The ache in my shoulder and arm was back – and I was grateful to the pain receptors in that part of my body for functioning properly.

I couldn’t find my other slipper – and I thought of the children around the world whose feet were thickly calloused because they didn’t own any shoes at all.

I turned the heat up slightly on the thermostat because I was cold, and was thankful for the roof above our heads, the heat from the boiler, the electricity humming through the house. All things I have personally seen many do without, and not by choice.

I helped my kids get ready for school, ready for breakfast, and gave thanks for their ability to attend a good school, to read and write and express themselves, to eat, draw, laugh and cry, ready to experience life on this Earth as fully as possible.

I kissed my wife on her way to work, grateful that I had tumbled, fallen in love and then married my best friend. I am thankful that she still accepts me, faults and all. Many, many faults and all. I am thankful that she is a strong and wise Latina, purposeful, thoughtful and loving. I thought of the people I have met with partners with no such qualities, those who have settled with negative somebodies who only accentuated their own negative, those that still wandered in circles not understanding why their life was less than, or even worse, blaming Life for their bad choices.

Later in the evening I lowered my head (so as not to be disrespectful to my instructor, it’s how I roll my eyes in his school) when he called for exercises that always puts a strain on my back. I immediately filled with gratitude as I considered all the many people my age and younger who are already unable to even consider exercise, aren’t able to play too physically with their kids, couldn’t run away or towards something if they really needed to.

It takes many steps we cannot explain and do not fully understand to do what we do and get where we get every day; all the incredibly chemical and neurological processes that occurred to be conceived and born and read words like these many years later, the fascinating cycles of nature that must combine to produce the apple you ate at lunch, even the multitude of large and small mechanical motions that need to happen in a precise order to drive your car to work, ride the subway home, get that plane safely to your destination. Those are human-made circumstances but they still required millions of years of evolution to invent a battery to power our toys. They all contain steps that are as much a mystery to most of us as the deepest of the oceans trenches or the vastness of outer space. It isn’t until those processes are interrupted or those abilities are taken away that we pay attention to the things that we routinely ignore, but it tends to happen this way because it is part of our nature to take things for granted. I am happy that there is at least one day on every calendar in our country that is dedicated to the action of giving thanks, of being grateful, of being aware of something (hopefully) outside of our own selves. Whether it is while having dinner with loved ones, serving meals to those in need or watching giant balloons soar past overhead, I welcome the invitation and extend it  as well, to think about the things we are thankful for that on any given day may float by uncelebrated and unrecognized. Think about them, it, that or they, and say:

“Thanks”.