Lessons in Gratitude

I want to return to a theme I’ve visited frequently: I am grateful to be surrounded by a supportive network of friends and family. It’s a weird phenomenon to consider that in one sense we as individuals are utterly alone: no one else can be us, no one else has our unique experiences and perspectives, no other human being has control over the decisions we make, the actions we take, the thoughts and feelings we have. And yet, if we are fortunate, we are also connected to and surrounded by people who are there for us as sounding boards, as counselors, as friends and loving presences in our lives.

When I have found myself grappling with a challenge, it has been a great comfort to be able to call, text, email, Facebook message friends and family to get their read on what’s happening, their advice on how to approach a given situation, or a hefty dose of reality. I talk, they listen. One friend asked me recently, “Okay, before you start talking, tell me what you want from me. Do you want advice or do you want me to just listen?” I appreciated her question, particularly as this particular friend would sometimes dive right into advice giving. As it turns out, on that occasion I wanted a little of both. I am grateful for the times when she simply listened, offering a nonjudgmental, loving presence.

I think that is one of the best gifts we can offer one another: a loving, listening presence. I have provided this many times over the years, offering counsel when requested but also simply listening, nodding and reflecting back rather than advising and telling people what to do. It’s one of the things I really like about the coach training I took a number of years ago; it taught me the philosophy of simply remaining curious. Rather than always leaping to solve someone’s problem for them, giving advice and direction, it is  by asking good questions the person is often able to discover their own answers. Even people who want to be told what to do can be guided toward figuring things out for themselves. It ends up being better for them to have done so, they are empowered by having reached their own conclusions and can take action on them.

It is in the act of deciding that we are truly alone. How many times has someone said to you, “I don’t know what to do?” They ask for and receive advice from any number of people, they gather information and data, they hem and haw, and perhaps lose sleep over it, depending on the importance of the decision. You can ask questions, offer suggestions, hold their hands and offer a loving presence, but at the end of the day they cross the threshold of the decision alone. It can be an agonizing process, for both the decider and the watchers. The good news is that once the decision is made and the companions escort the decider to the threshold and watch them cross over, the decider often emerges on the other side to find their companions waiting for them. Yes, making a decision–particularly an important one–is a solitary action, one that you ultimately make alone. The good news is that the aloneness lasts only while the decision is being made. Once it’s done, everything that in that moment had stood still in an odd, existential, frozen stasis, suddenly comes back to life and an entirely new course has been set in motion. Amazing.

I have been a companion and a decider. I am grateful for the community of family and friends–seen and unseen–that surround me. We support one another in a “network of mutuality,” as Martin Luther King, Jr. describes it. At the end of the day, what can be better?

“…She’s my sister…” I am grateful this evening for my family. It’s a broken record and an oft repeated them in these blogs–family is mentioned in approximately 125 of the 945 posts. When I think of the most important, biggest blessing in my life it is the love and support of my two children and my five siblings and their partners and children. Second and related to this blessing is the gift I had in living with and being raised by two strong, loving parents who, though now physically gone from my life (nearly 20 years ago for my mother and only three for my father), still remain with me in my daily thoughts and ponderings.

I can (and have) picked up the phone to call one of my sisters with silly questions about a recipe or a reminiscence or a bit of trivia. My brother and I laugh about all kinds of crazy things and can still recite from memory whole passages from Bill Cosby comedy routines we used to listen to on vinyl records back in the day. It’s so funny that we introduced our children–his and mine in particular–to Bill Cosby many years ago when they were children and now they can recite some of those same passages.

It was my family to whom I turned during some of my traumatic experiences–my divorce many years ago, the loss of a job, a partner, a home not so long ago. They reached out and supported me, sometimes actively, sometimes more in the background, offering a network of love and care. After the challenges of a few years ago I moved to the same metropolitan area where all three of my sisters reside to start a new job and begin again. Coming here was healing for me and I have been able to slowly pull myself together and recover from the drama and its aftereffects. Oh, I still have my moments of struggle and occasional frustration, but being here with my sisters has reconnected me to them in wonderful ways.

Then there’s family of choice. I am grateful for my “sister” Pat, my best friend from college, and my “brother” Roland, whom I met in California a number of years ago. I am so grateful to have friends who are like family. I am fortunate to have a few deep friendships, but also grateful for the acquaintanceships that while not as close as what I have with Pat and Roland (and a few other folks), they are solid and comforting and present, mostly in the background but sometimes in the foreground. “Make new friends, but keep the old,” the old childhood song says, “One is silver and the other gold.”

I’m so very grateful for family and friends, good work colleagues and acquaintances, all of whom enrich my life in so many ways. And it might be that I express the same sentiments about their importance, but it is not to be helped. On the voluminous list of things for which I am grateful, these blessings of family and friends sits very near the top. I keep coming back to a quote that apparently doesn’t exist in the form I remember it. It says, “No man is poor who has friends.” Perhaps I made it up or it is a twin to the quote from the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” that says, “Dear George, remember no man is a failure who has friends.” I am neither poor nor a failure because heaven knows I’m blessed with friends and family. And for that I must say that I am exceedingly grateful. And so it is.