Yeah, But I Am Thankful

The main point of Thanksgiving, of course, is to express gratitude for the good things in our lives. And as I wrote last year, it should also be about showing gratitude for what is yet to come.

Some people genuinely believe that life is great, so they find it very easy to talk about the things they are thankful for. Depending on their religious or spiritual beliefs, they might thank God, the universe, or no one in particular.

Others find it more difficult because of their life situations, but they can still use the holiday as a time to try to look at their lives a little more positively. That’s good, of course, but once the turkey-dinner leftovers are gone, the holiday cheer has passed, and they have to drag themselves back to work on Monday or face the gauntlet of Christmas-shopping crowds in the malls, their grateful feelings fall prey to the “life sucks” virus.

Of course, there are also those who can’t find anything in their lives to be thankful for, not even for one day. It is sad to feel like that, but I suppose at least they are not hypocrites.

Four Perspectives

Most of us sort of go back and forth to one extent or another in how we feel about the “blessings” or “curses” in our lives. But when people look at or talk about their lives, it seems there are basically four options:

1) Everything is great and perfect – the unrealistic “rose-colored glasses” approach.

2) Everything is terrible and my life sucks – the “paint everything black,” gloom and doom approach.

3) There are a lot of good things, sure, but I do have a lot of problems, which I guess we could call the “glass is half empty” approach.

4) Yeah, I have some issues like everyone else, but there are plenty of positives that outweigh the problems, which I guess we’d have to all the “glass is half full” approach.

We can dismiss the first two immediately because life is never so absolute. Nothing is perfect, and nothing is completely terrible. We can try to alter our attitudes to attain those absolutes, but it’s almost impossible to keep the world around us from injecting a bit of the opposite side. We can come close to convincing ourselves that everything is perfect, and that even the bad things that come our way from time to time – the imperfect – are a form of “perfection.”

We can manifest the negative absolute in our lives more easily, it seems, than the positive. But even the dourest and dark-minded person cannot completely shut out those occasional rays of sunshine that try to bring them out of it. Little glints of light can still make their way into the gloom.

More common, and realistic, are those who focus on one side, either the negative or positive, but acknowledge that the other side exists and exerts influence. But which side do we focus on, the upbeat or the downcast? I think for most of us, it tends to fluctuate depending on what’s happening in our lives or how long we’ve been living one way or the other. I know that this is how it is for me.

I like to believe that I live in the upbeat world – focusing on the positive while acknowledging that problems exist – more often than in the other. This blog is testament that I have spent some time in each, but I think that even my darker posts usually end with a positive message. And so it is here.

The fact is that, while I do have some problems, disappointments and even regrets, the things I should be thankful for – the positives – far outweigh the negatives that I sometimes dwell on. In one of my earliest posts, written more than four years ago, I wrote that I was a lucky guy. And I still believe that.

Things are Pretty Darned Good

Last year I wrote about being thankful for what is yet to come. I just reread that post, and it still applies, so I won’t repeat it. I’ll just mention a few things in the “yeah, there are some bad things, but the good is much better” category.

Yeah, I have some aches and pains. My right knee has become a chronic problem, and I frequently get stiffness in my back and hip. 

But, I don’t have any really serious health issues (as far as I know), I can still go out and do 50 km or more on my bike, swim for 30 minutes straight, and do a solid hour or so on the weights. And the, ummm... “essential equipment” still works perfectly. So no real worries about health. That is something to be thankful for!

Sure, I have reasons to complain about work, particularly the mindless corporate bureaucracy that tends to deaden the joy of any creative endeavor. And I’d like to be making more money, of course. 

But money has never been my first priority, and I have definitely had much worse jobs with even worse bureaucracy. I love teaching English, and I know I am very good at it. I enjoy my students every day, and I am blessed to share an office with three fantastic colleagues. That is a lot to be thankful for.

OK, so I live in a small apartment in an old building, and sometimes it is cold in winter, and sometimes there are noisy people around me. 

But it is actually pretty comfortable most of the time, and I have lived in worse places. What’s more, I have it a lot better than many others here in Kharkiv and certainly better than probably the majority of people around the world. And I have had the experience of living in a pretty luxurious home in the Denver suburbs, as well as in a fantastic cabin in a mountain forest. Most people can hardly even dream of that. More good stuff to be thankful for.

It’s true that the city I’ve lived in for most of the past nine years – Kharkiv – is a post-Soviet town that has a lot of dreary looking buildings, poor infrastructure, and a corrupt government. 

But it has its good points too, like a lot of really good restaurants and fun places to go. What’s more, I have been able to travel from here to points in Europe that would have cost me an arm and a leg to visit from Colorado. And I can even think about traveling east to points in Asia or the Indian Ocean. I love travel and adventure, so that’s a lot to be thankful for.

The only true disappointment and regret in my life has been that I’ve had to live so much of it alone and without that one special person, a special love to shower me with light and warmth, and to receive that same light and warmth that I’ve been so ready to give. The person who I thought for decades was “the one” wasn't. And a couple of more recent hopes were just figments of my wishful thinking. 

But, I have some of the most amazing and special friends a man could ask for, both here in Ukraine and back in the States. Every day they add some measure of light and warmth that makes it all worthwhile. And even as the rapidly passing years seem to make finding that special love less and less likely, I still have hope that it’s not impossible. As long as I have such friends as I have, I definitely have a lot to be thankful for.

And to add a cherry to the top of this gratitude cake, I have two absolutely amazing and talented daughters whom I love dearly, and we have relationships that sometimes I feel are stronger than I deserve. They and their families give me a universe to be thankful for.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about coffee. I can drink coffee every day. Sometimes I can have it with Bailey’s. That is a cupful of delicious stuff to be thankful for.

Let’s see if I can remember all of this the next time I get a little down and start to think that things aren’t so great. In fact, things are really pretty darned good.

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