Lit eZine Vol 4 | p-22 | INSIGHTS | Gratitude: A Work In Progress

PERSONAL ESSAY

GRATITUDE: A WORK IN PROGRESS
by KC Redding-Gonzalez

It is hard to be grateful aloud.

     Like many people, I have lived a life of underwhelming performance, jilted dreams, and spoiled expectations. Things that once seemed almost like a table spread with possibility –if not destiny – withered and fell away, leaving exhaustion and regret behind. As I have gotten older, I am fairly certain that where Life’s dreams should have been, there are merely the stages of grief remaining.

     Grief somehow seems better to bear than imagining those ghosts of disappointment that must have surfaced like capricious dolphins in the memories of several long-ago teachers. In their eyes (when retuning graded essays or poems or short stories) there had seemed almost a glaze of future expectation, of murmuring “that was a student of mine once” – as if more certain than I of some as-yet unrealized glamorous literary glory that would certainly be forthcoming… Alas, but it was not.

     I confess I even feel shame that I failed to make sufficient use of my talent…But more often it is grief for a gift that instead arrived stillborn. That brief red flush of the flesh was misguided, and no one (perhaps especially myself) wanted to believe that this was the sign of the sudden loss of oxygen that precedes death. Yet there it lay – my talent – never to move again in any real or meaningful way.

     Yet within the murk of loss and the realization that things hoped for would not be allowed to flower as I chose, there have been some mileposts met, some little achievements and hidden, unexpected pearls of happiness scattered haphazardly in life between train wrecks and unforeseen complications. I have, at times, been timidly happy – even grateful. Yet –

     Sometimes it seems like to admit those successes, to be grateful for them– even in small measure – is to invite retribution. Maybe that’s why I have trouble accepting compliments, and actually saying the words “thank you.” There is always a sense of living beneath a rather large, cartoon anvil aimed squarely at any acknowledgment or hint of success. That anvil has ears and eyes and a sense of entitlement. There is always that impending sister sense of imminent doom.

     As a horror writer, I should be used to this – able to shrug it off, take any fear or dread or loss and weave it back into a creative loop that generates great story ideas for years. But I find my own fear is a thing apart from my creativity when it isn’t an outright roadblock. Fancy that, I think to myself, NEWS FLASH: HORROR WRITER PARALYZED WITH FEAR…NO FILM OR MANUSCRIPT AT 11:00!

     Still, there is always something secretively waiting at the bottom of the tank. And when I sit in the quiet of my home, a lap full of cats, it uncoils its gangly head to remind me that there – among all of the fears and insecurities about myself and the world – is a tiny seedling, a germ of something that refuses to die and instead roams my thoughts, haunting the haunted writer with tiny wisps of faith.

     Faith…Hope’s itinerant disguise…a lifeline in the darkest of dark times…the shadow cast by – and likewise casting – gratitude…

     Why does it get such a bad rap? When do we say thank you for that one thing that keeps us centered and restores peace?

     It too often seems that the simplest of things are always at risk – if not from the universe itself, then from the people we thought we could trust. It makes for the creation of masks, the denial of happiness, and the secreting away of the truly meaningful things.

     Sometimes we hide those very things from ourselves…

     So it is also an irony that often all we have left is faith – today, one of the biggest targets of all.

     But faith is not religion and it is undeserving of all the loud condemnation.

     Faith is not an endorsement of belief.

     Faith is the simple reaching out of the soul for the comfort of Something More, Something of its own logic and reason. It is a life preserver in a stormy sea, the touch of a hand in a moment of profound loss, the simple trust that somehow, it will all work out as it should.

     Why, then, are those of us who cling to faith the butt of ridicule when we need it most? Why are we lumped into synods of singularly thinking pretenders who adorn themselves with the supernatural and magical thinking? Do those who have more than us think we are so deserving of scorn and derision that it becomes their own personal mission and righteous duty to bring us to heel? To learn our place and suffer in it?

     Perhaps the depths to which some power-mongers are threatened by faith is the cue to its importance in our own meager lives.

     Faith – like suffering – is personal. Private. Faith is the strength behind our character, the umbilical cord between our humanity, our fellow species, and the planet that birthed our kind. It is about meaning and the giving of meaning (and then inevitable doubt) as well as those many human instruments that steal it from us – all because there is no greater, more insidious glee for them than the power trip that arises from the orchestrated theft and erosion of hope.

     Many argue that faith is a way the desperate and powerless claim control over the uncontrollable, that we need that illusion shattered for our own good. But faith is not control; faith is the letting go of control – it is acceptance of that which cannot be controlled – not because it is by some Devine design, but because it is a part of living in a world that has its own laws and balances which we are never too big or too righteous to be subject to. Why, then, are we conditioned to castigate ourselves? Isn’t failure a part of the process?

     Faith releases us from the guilt that accompanies the illusion that we could have control only if we desired it enough – were smart enough, were quick enough… It frees us to make of circumstance what we can. It also lifts guilt like hot air balloons on a cool air current.

     Faith humbles like no human being – making a mockery of wisdom, of smarts, of dogged determination. Faith makes light of knowledge and savvy and leaves luck behind in its place. Faith shows us that luck and life favor the awake and aware, it gives and takes like the rising and ebbing tides without a plan or a vendetta. It is not God come to avenge hurt pride but that which may be God to spread across the land the choices now available for our use.

     Why then do we label faith as clinging to illogic? Or as embracing a lack of ambition?

     Why do we attack those who live with inner peace, or even outer happiness?

     I am so grateful for the moments I can accept life as it is and not agonize over lost, better choices. I am grateful it is not my responsibility to save the world but to be a better human being in it.  

     Likewise, I am grateful for the company of all beings who make the journey a better, less lonely one – even as their lives remind me of having even less control and more acceptance needed; faith is also love.

     The journey of faith is not about religion or finding God – it is about finding balance and residing within the limits of our natural world. If we find God along the way, we might just be richer for the discovery – but it in no way makes us better, smarter, or more special than the most “insignificant” of living things. It does not free us from the ugly, or the evil of life or others. It does not put more or less of life in front of us. But it does give us the knowledge that sometimes the best we can do is all we can do – and that is alright.

     Faith is not about judgment or being judged. It is about doing when something needs to be done and trying to do what is right in the greater image of the world without the need for self-benefit. It is about compassion, and fairness within our capacity to see it. It is about giving our personal best, and not about the power of numbers but the power of one to help another.

     Faith, then, is less about religion and more about life – about gratitude for the simple chance to choose. It has guided me when I just tried less to force it and decided to allow it…It has comforted me when I was drowning and freed me when I felt trapped. It even exists when I choose to couch it in religion …

     What better way to accept rejection as constructive criticism than to bathe oneself in faith? Writers absorb rejection into their bloodstreams…it is such a constant companion to our calling that without faith to continue, I am certain that there would be no Art in the world…Isn’t that a lesson for us all? That sometimes just trying is the point and seedbed for little, sustaining sips of happiness?

     Faith is also a compass. Sometimes it points to God, or to a more ethical way of living life if we need the instruction manual…But it always points to contemplation, to ourselves. Why do we think we should control everything? How much angst and agony does that spawn? Faith is the key to understanding that the loss of control in life is okay – it is normal….and often the foundation of reinvention…the realization in real-time of those tiny grains of gratitude…

     It is also elusive when we expect it to be a staunch companion –because faith in itself is not a staunch companion…It is not a thing but a life-way to be practiced in every moment… It is homework. It is something we must strive to hold close, accepting that it may not always be what we thought we wanted or needed it to be or indeed be where we left it last…because faith is about freedom of choice – our choice to embrace it in its diversity of options or to reject it for the diminishing illusion of control.

     I am grateful for faith. I am grateful for the many times it has pulled me back from the fire and the times I have been burned. I am most grateful because my fellow humanity has absolutely no hand in it – no power over it. I am grateful because it is there when I choose to see it…when I choose to let it comfort me…when I need it…

     Likewise, only we ourselves can lose faith. It cannot be taken from us without our allowing it, even in the darkest, most frightening of times. It is a shadow sewn to the soles of our feet – always there if we merely choose to see it. I am grateful for its tenacity because Life, with all its ups and downs, is always a work-in-progress –a canvas upon which the painting of anything is possible and all things can be forgiven. I may need the quiet moment to see it, and to realize that from that tidal pool, I can see the ocean. I may need the quiet to say it. But at least I know I need it.

     For now, as I turn the many corners that decades of ageing provide, I have realized that I have exhausted the busy work, the worrying, the guilt-tripping, the bottomless sense of grief. I no longer need nor want the chaos of other people’s expectations or disappointments in my life. And so, I see an end: I sense a chance to seize the day and stop the insanity. I no longer care about other peoples’ ideas of “success” and seek my own measure of happiness. I no longer really care about publication or feel compelled to be a part of the future of my genre; this is now a choice. I don’t really need the stress or the pressure, or the ghosts of long-gone teachers’ misplaced expectations. Writing is once again a pleasure.

     Right now, as the birds alight on the balcony bird feeder, as I try to plot out how to retire in a land of few options, as I feed the cats their Second Breakfast and watch Autumn change the leaves to rusty oranges and browns, I know it is more than enough to just have survived, to have shared the company of living things on the road to elsewhere. Faith will have to carry me the rest of the way. And in the quiet moments it provides, I will find the words of thanks and utter them to the silence.

     Gratitude is often in the little things – maybe that should be enough after all.