Reverb 10 Prompt (from Victoria Klein): Appreciate. What’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?
“Man, have I got it good.” I can’t tell you how many times this realization has dawned on me this past year. I’ve always periodically reminded myself (or have been reminded by others) just how fortunate I am to enjoy good health, to have a roof over my head, to have been born to loving parents, and all that jazz. But something has shifted over the course of this year in particular, so that now this sense of appreciation is with me almost every day. I’m not sure what has shifted exactly, but this being Reverb 10 and all, perhaps some reflection is in order…
I’m a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to processing “life,” and it may be that I’ve finally digested a few of the more impressionable experiences from the past couple of years. For instance, there was that year off from work. My wife did her dissertation research (Medical Anthropology) in an impoverished community in Mexico, and I lived there with her for most of that year. I was ready for a break from a fifteen year stretch working some high-stress/low-pay mental health jobs, the last of which was in a psychiatric hospital, where I was confronted daily by the grim reality of battered souls and shattered lives.
If I thought my time in Mexico was going to be some kind of vacation, I was in for a few surprises. The first came when I saw where we were going to be living for the next year — in the midst of poverty the likes of which I had never quite believed existed on God’s Green Earth. Then, only a few weeks after our arrival, I injured myself — quite badly — while playing soccer with some amigos. Fear, pain, and disability would be with me the rest of the way. On a visit home, on my birthday in fact, my father fell ill and nearly died. He pulled through, but continues to endure an ever diminishing quality of life and regular trips to the hospital, any one of which could be his last go-around. In so many ways, these recent experiences tore me wide open, and only recently have I recovered enough — physically, mentally, and spiritually — to notice the enduring changes in perspective.
I’ve got it good. So, so good. This is contrary to the fact that some of my friends and family seem to pity me — me working a temp job with no benefits, wearing the same worn out clothes I bought ten years ago. Me with no cable TV, no retirement plan, no savings, no kids, no religion, no clue what I’m doing next. But me, I feel like a king most days. Again, not in a conceptual “Things could be worse” or “Think about those less fortunate” kind of way. I really feel it in my bones now. I know I’ve got it good.
My wife just bought me an iMac for my 40th birthday, for god’s sake. Not to mention the fact that I have a wife, somebody to love and who loves me. Not only did she buy me an iMac, but she’s also likely to land a sweet job soon and become my 4-evah sugah mama! (Isn’t that right Sweetpea?). I have everything anyone could need and a shameful amount more. I’m also the healthiest horse in the barn. The last time I caught so much as a cold was on that birthday I spent in the hospital with my Dad — in 2008. Knock on wood. (Shit, I can feel a tickle in my throat already.)
How do I express my gratitude for all this? It’s subtle, but I think I’m far more compassionate and generous than I’ve ever been. I’ve shifted my gaze just enough off of my own navel to see the people all around me, people to whom I can offer whatever it is that I have enough of in any given moment. And what’s dawned on me this year, bright as a thousand suns, is that at this point in my life I have enough… of everything. If my luck continues, I still have another half-life to live and to share all that good that I’ve got.
[Note to self: Noticing that I never answer the prompts as written.]