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| Just like Stevie Wonder sang, "Isn't she lovely?" |
What’s going on, NIP?
I don’t know about
you, but my life has been rather chaotic and hectic over the last month. And
yet even in the midst of all this craziness, I still find plenty of time to
reflect upon how lucky I am. In fact, I may go so far as to say that I am the
luckiest person alive. I know that is simply my opinion and nothing that can be
quantified, yet that doesn’t detract from the way I feel and perceive myself in
relation to life at this point. And while there may be a ton of reasons for why
I feel this way, chief among them is my beautiful wife Erin who is pictured
above.
This past
Tuesday Erin and I decided to take the day off from work at the last moment and
celebrate our 9th wedding anniversary. We enjoyed a leisurely
morning of reading and drinking coffee, then—dressed in our “Just”/”Married”
matching T-shirts from our Sandals wedding in the Bahamas—headed out to
Flatwoods Park to walk the seven mile loop trail that is situated in the middle
of the Lower Hillsborough Wilderness Preserve, a gorgeous tract of land that
sprawls over 5,600 acres. It was a perfect day in terms of weather, and after
our two hour hike we went to a local eatery that we have wanted to try for some
time now. Even while there, we took nearly two hours to enjoy our lunch as we
sat outside on the patio in the shade. We came home in the middle of the
afternoon to watch Netflix, and before bed I wrote about my five favorite
moments from the day in my gratitude journal.
The gratitude
journal is an idea that I got from a book I read not long ago, The Gratitude Diaries: How a Year of Lookingon the Bright Side Can Transform Your Life by Janice Kaplan (I highly
recommend it). The gist of the book is that Kaplan makes a New Year’s
resolution to try and become more grateful for all that she has rather than
focusing on what she didn’t have. Written over the course of a year, each chapter
takes place over the duration of a single month with a specific focus on how to
incorporate gratitude into her daily life. She has interesting conversations
with many learned people in various fields, often citing data from their research
on how being more grateful is linked to better well-being and other physical
and mental health outcomes. The first step she begins with is the gratitude
journal, which I have been keeping since the day before I wrote the last letter
on humility. Though this isn’t something new to me (I kept a running log for
about a year of a similar journal called “What Went Well,” which is reflective
strategy promoted in Martin Seligman’s excellent book, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being),
I have enjoyed the exercise because it has me savoring the experiences for
which I have been grateful each day; not only do I enjoy them in the moment—something
I have been prone to doing for the last couple of years—but a second time upon
reflection at the end of the day prior to going to bed. It’s a great way to end
the day on a positive note, and cultivating gratitude certainly makes inroads
to building a more positive outlook in general over the long run.
And yet all
this conscious reflecting on gratitude has brought about an unintended
conundrum of sorts, a real chicken-or-the-egg type question: namely, am I a
becoming more humble because I am cultivating gratitude, or am I becoming more grateful
because I am cultivating humility? I’ve thought about it a lot since writing
the last letter, and all I can say for sure at this point is that these two are
intricately linked through a virtuous cycle of reciprocity. One leads to the
other, for sure, and so I don’t think it matters in the end, but I know for me
personally it began with gratitude. However one comes to this intersection
between gratitude and humility, each of us will have been altered for the
better by the time we get here. The best part is that there is really no need
to focus on one over the other because the symbiotic nature of the two promotes
a flowering of both virtues.
But back to the beginning of my
letter…I feel like the luckiest guy alive, and it definitely begins and ends
with Erin. Radiating outward from that spoke of love, though, are innumerable
simple things and moments for which I am grateful each day. And the more time
has passed, the more I contemplate how fortunate I am to experience even any single one of them, let alone a
plurality of phenomena. Thinking about this, I believe, brought me to my knees
in a metaphorical sense because it helped me realize that all of this is
conferred without being asked. It is just there. Or, more precisely, just here.
It’s right now. It’s everything within your field of senses in this very
moment. It is the awareness itself. And whatever term we’d like to attach to
this consciousness, sentience, or what have you, it is the act of bearing
witness to life that brings us to this intersection of gratitude and humility.
By being thankful and appreciative for all that we have been given, this also
brings with it a sense of abundance, generosity, and humility. It would only
make sense that if we have been given so much that we have a duty to share with
others. As far as I can figure out, I haven’t done anything special to earn the
air that I breathe, the colors I see, the birdsong I hear, the flowers I smell,
the warmth I detect, or anything else that arises in this most essential
awareness. But I know others have something to do with it, of that much I am
certain.
I know I am getting a bit
abstract at this point, NIP, and I can’t help but be philosophical about this
because of all the reading and thinking in which I’ve been engaged as of late.
So, let me provide you with some real life examples from my journal. I’ve read
through them before writing this letter in the hopes a few examples would get
to the heart of what I am trying to convey with this letter—that at the
intersection of gratitude and humility, at the nexus of exchange between the self and the other,
is the heart of what it means to be human, to be alive. Here are just a few of
the lines from my log that I think made me feel that way the most in the moment
when they happened:
Grateful
for the light rain and feeling of mist hitting my skin during my morning run.
Grateful
to go for a walk after school and feel the breeze and sunshine.
Grateful
for the orange-pink hue on the clouds early this morning.
Grateful
for the sight of a mockingbird landing on the stop sign in the cold winds.
Grateful
to watch “sky television” for several minutes and enjoy passing clouds.
Grateful
to support my mentees and help them through difficult times.
Grateful
to connect with a student and have a meaningful conversation about life.
Grateful
to take a stand for something because it’s the right thing to do.
Grateful
to meet new people and deepen relationships with others.
Grateful
for the support of so many others in my life—from Erin to fellow mentors.
Grateful
to have made a delicious meal for my beautiful wife Erin.
Grateful
for a wonderful wife who makes me pancakes breakfasts upon request.
Grateful
to have the time to share simple moments with Erin today.
Grateful
to be married to an incredible woman for nine years today!
Grateful
to have been given another day, especially to spend with my wife.
Though that’s
only a small sampling of what I have written over the past month—I jot down at
least 5 every night—I noticed that these entries revolve largely around three
areas of my life: my solo interactions with the natural world; the moments that
pertain to giving help to, or receiving it from, others; my interactions with
the love of my life. I cannot say that I gravitate toward these
moments/memories each night consciously, but they clearly cropped up when I
reviewed what I have written over the last 35 days. Regardless of subconscious bias
or intent, when I looked back over them they only made me smile again, many of
them reproducing not only the moment in my mind, but the feelings of happiness,
contentment, and awe that I felt then too.
But now it’s your turn, NIP.
If you’ve read this far, then I
hope you take up this challenge…write your own gratitude journal. To be
consciously and constantly aware of even some of people, moments, or things for
whom or which you have to be grateful, you’ll quickly find yourself heading
toward that intersection that I find myself at now. Who knows? Perhaps you’re
already there or have even moved beyond it at this point in your life. All that
I have figured out up to this moment is that gratitude and humility are
inextricably bound. I don’t think the question about which comes first really
matters so long as we arrive at this juncture while we sojourn in this life.
Because when we arrive at this intersection, we see that the near limitless possibilities
only expand toward the horizon in every direction. I don’t know where to go
from here, but so long as I keep these two complementary virtues in my head and
heart at all times, I have faith that I’ll never get lost.
As always, NIP, I am grateful for and humbled by your taking
an interest in my journey.
Thanks for walking the path with me,
- - Ryan
