When you’re a child and you get a treat, your parents nudge you and say, “What do you say?”“Thank you!” you sing out and run happily off to play.
But you don’t think much about that “thank you,” and you don’t always mean it.
Then one day you’re an adult, and you’re on day who-knows-what of quarantine. You’re exhausted from working and logging children on for classes and cooking a thousand meals for people.
You read an article that says you really should be grateful for your life, and you sigh and think, “Well, I am grateful. I mean, everyone’s healthy and happy. And I’d be even more grateful if I could finish a cup of coffee in the morning before it turned cold.”
For a split second, you feel guilty and remember being that child who said, “Thank you,” but didn’t really mean it.
Because sometimes gratitude feels like another assignment, like something else you should be doing, along with all the intellectual enrichment you are supposed to be providing for your children, and all the vegetables you should be serving with every meal, and the housekeeping and hobbies you should be fitting into all this extra free time people keep talking about that seems to have disappeared.
But what if instead of forcing yourself to be grateful, you approached it a little differently. What if, instead, you gave yourself permission to be grateful? What if carving out a few minutes every day to look back on the day with gratitude weren’t a requirement, but a special gift to yourself?
That’s what I found myself thinking after I went to an event featuring my friend, Father Tim Brown, S.J., who spoke about resilience and empathy and gratitude. He reminded us of the importance of gratitude “to build up our psychological immune system.” He pulled me out of myself, and I couldn’t help but be thankful for him—and for everything.
I found myself thinking that maybe letting yourself dwell on your life with gratitude could be less like eating your vegetables and more like enjoying dessert at the end of the day.
So, after yet another crazy day, I let myself go take a walk. I soaked in the sights and sounds of the neighborhood and enjoyed the May breeze and the light fading from the sky. I thought about how tired I am and how fortunate I am that I have too many people who need me and too much work to do and too few hours in the day to accomplish everything.
In that space, with just a little distance, I felt truly grateful for what had earlier felt overwhelming.
And I realized that maybe you do need a little space to be truly grateful. It makes sense to me that the Jesuits encourage people to make an Examen at the end of the day and reflect through a lens of gratitude.
It’s hard to feel thankful when you’re feeling guilty for yelling “Why can’t you just be quiet and play video games?” at children who were fighting while you were on a video call. Later, with space and perspective, it’s so much easier to be thankful that you are able to do your job from home and provide for your family. You can be thankful that your child still wants to photobomb your meetings nine weeks into this escapade. You can even be thankful that your phone always seems to be ringing and buzzing and dinging all at the same time. There’s a joy to that, too.
Letting ourselves focus on gratitude in this quarantine time when we have so many limitations and responsibilities might be key to our survival—especially if we can approach it not as a chore, but as a treat.
Thank you, God, for a hundred things,
For the flowers that bloom, and the birds that sing.
For the sun that shines, and the rain that drops,
For ice cream, raisins, and lollipops.
(Origin unknown to me)
