Gratitude

It's that time of year, when we gather together with friends and family, everyone encouraged to discern what we're grateful for.  This is a curious thing when you think about it; it's an exercise we really ought to do every time the sun comes up, and not limit our expressions of gratitude to one day a year.  It's even possible to think about this from the standpoint of irony: We Americans have so much, and enjoy so much, and are exposed to so much opportunity, that we may be the first community in history to be too rich to understand poverty and its ramifications.  Indeed, one reason the current economic malaise has us so filled with anxiety is that we have lost any contact we may once have had with our ability to relate to the lack of things.  We're afraid of what may appear under the layers of materialistic excess.

 

So here's my humble attempt to peer under the layers of my own comfort and ease, to discern a few things I'm grateful for today and every day:

Just for being able to do what I'm doing, to watch these words appear on a screen, and know, even if no one reads them--which is likely the case--that I have the physical ability, the technical understanding and apparatus, and the leisure time to engage in such activity, which would have seemed terribly self-indulgent a generation ago.  Not to mention the fact that I'm able to do this without fear of censure or oversight from authoritarian intrusion.  We forget what an astonishing reality that is--a luxury to most of the world's population, to speak our minds freely without fear.

I'm grateful for my spouse and her unending, and utterly complete support of who I am and what I believe.  She is a marvelous example of what a blessing and an energizing force a wholly committed marriage can be and is.  This realization, perhaps more than any other, drives our commitment not only to each other, but to the promotion of equality in marriage for everyone, regardless of labels society seems driven to impose.  It's this rich, fulfilling commitment we share that gives us the understanding that until our LGBT brothers and sisters have the right to marriage, the institution itself lacks its whole, enriching dimension in society.  

I'm grateful for the charity and generosity of everyday people, those who recognize opportunities every day to make others' lives easier, and act on that impulse.  As much depredation, evil and asocial behavior as we see and read about, the overwhelming majority of people we encounter are good, compassionate, considerate folks who respond in deference to the better angels of our nature.  We are good people; we have an inherent disdain for the negative; we will endure.