Gratitude

On our short drive to a friend's house today, Addy asked me a question that I quickly summoned an answer to, but then realized - I don't actually know the answer to. Her question and my answer, within a matter of just a few minutes, awoke me from a lifelong state of indifferent observation and jolted upon me a deep spell of true, inspired gratitude - a new, brighter, lighter lens through which to see and love this world.

She asked me: "How do they make roads?"

"Well," I replied quickly. "There used to be just big grassy fields everywhere, and then they removed the grass with big machines and made dirt roads so that people could go from over here to over there. Then, they discovered how to make cement, and now construction workers pour cement and then smooth it out, and then it dries and becomes a road!"

Wow, what a logical yet absolutely speculative answer. I was content with my mediocre attempt - it might have even followed the synoptic lineage of road history. But Addy remained silent, peering out her car window, unimpressed. Or perhaps she had forgotten that she had asked the question. Or maybe, just maybe, she wasn't asking for an answer but just speaking a question.

After I offered my rapid and incomplete answer, I was struck - literally - slammed, into a place of humility. A place of awe. A place of true, sincere gratitude. I don't know why it was this moment, or this question, but it just - happened. I realized - how do I know how roads are made? Do I really know how roads are made? Who made this very road that I was driving on today? Did I sweat their sweat or design their blueprint? And what came before? Who created the grassy fields upon which the farms and farmers and wildlife imprinted their temporary existence that was then, for them, home. Footprints of their toils that were, for them, their whole hard life. In that moment, I realized that I look around my world and act as though I am its creator. As if I paved each road. As if I planted these trees that line my street or that speckle the forest landscape of my highway drive. Accordingly, it would seem, from my indifference to them, that I also erected all the buildings of my life, these stores here or those churches there or that mighty skyscraper here or that shelter there. I do not think, hardly even consider, the life that went into their foundations - the dripping tears and sweat of those real people who conceived of their vision, who gathered the materials, and who poured themselves out, day after day, to raise those standing walls - right there - from nothing but bare earth of the ground and the endless hard work of hands and minds, all working together. This is my world that I pass by everyday, without gratitude. Without care or thought.

I think about how boastful I can be about all the stuff that fills my life. The dressers and chairs and the over-the-counter medicines and the running water and even the walls of my home. How can I be surrounded by creation I don't really see or hardly ever say "Thank You" for? I think about my travels throughout the world - admiring the ancient buildings in Tunisia or the cobblestone roads of Germany or the mighty Alps in Switzerland. I admired them as much as I admired myself for being there, to witness them. But I stood inside those moments without true gratitude. Without simple humility. If I was grateful, it was for the opportunity. It was for having the means to be there or for having a camera to snapshot it into my life book of been-there and done-that. Thinking now - I did not fight the wars to wrestle those lands to freedom, I did not lay those old Bavarian cobblestone streets, stone by stone by stone. I did not love the walls of those ancient towers or cry at the mercy of their wreckage. I did not inspire those mountains of beauty. And I did not paint their cloud-washed view, the miracle of sky - so inexplicably majestic but yet a dimension of nature that needs no science, only human eyes, to discover. From the simplicity of a turning wheel to the intricacies of a thousand languages to the broadness of the starry night sky to the smallness of a computer microchip. This is the stuff that fills our everyday life. This is the stuff of our world that we consider ours, or ours enough to take for granted. For me, I offer such small, piecemeal gratitude, such shallow and temporary gratefulness, that I wonder why it all doesn't disappear in a dream so that I may awake, exasperated by its fullness and awed by its bounty.

Sometimes our lack of gratitude is an abundance of awe that is chaneled toward the wrong things. We scan the grand libraries and wall-to-wall books of a scholar, admiring him greatly for his expansive collection, how well-read he must be, and how much wisdom he must know. We admire him as if he authored every one of those books or imparted by self-endowment the entire wall of his knowledge. And even so, did he wire his trillion synapses or pare the tree for parchment? Did his hands build those shelves or his inventiveness light that lamp above his reading chair? Or, if we don't admire him, then we ridicule him, smirking critically - why does he spend his time so, reading these works that translate so unsubstantially to a life that really matters? Or, if we don't ridicule him, then we envy him - feeling ourselves inadequate, unread, or unenlightened by comparison, wishing in a small private way that we could be more like him, jealous of his accomplishments and depreciative of our meager own. When we judge others, for good or for bad, we are, at the same time, judging ourselves. As we stand on the sideline in observation of others, we are judging their lives, their accomplishments, their doings and their sayings as who they are against our self-judgment of who we are not, or, vice versa. Why, why is this so? Why does criticism, envy, and self-depreciation, or, just the opposite - boastfulness and self-proving, rise so quickly to our surface while gratitude stays locked from our hearts or silent from our lips? Why can we not appreciate the work and life of others, and all the stuff of life, and release that gratitude from our clenched fists?

Yes, gratitude does come to us, even overwhelms us at times. As a mother, it comes - that glowing moment, as we stare deep into the eyes of our newborn babies, these little lives we carried but know we did not by our own labor create. How? How! These tiny fingers, these yearning eyes, this fragile paper skin? It is all too miraculous for answers; it can only be contained in question. Or as parents, watching our children grow into themselves - learning and leaping into life before we can explain to them, or to ourselves, just quite how. Why we are not more alive in this kind of gratitude but instead half asleep most days with indifference, I do not know. Why we do not burst alive with "Thank You!" moments each day for no reason except to throw joy into the air because we must, because we literally cannot cap our wonder - I do not know.

It is difficult, plainly yes, when we are sunk into our suffering, struggling with the madness of complexity, the chaos of details, the annoyances of daily life or the incurable hurt of others - it is hard to envelope gratitude when our hearts are gripped otherwise with pain, anger, or isolation. We look at these dark things as the "stuff of life." But are they, really? Or other times, we are gripped inside ourselves. We become our own scholar - admiring all that we know and all that we have as though they are the fruits of our own toilsome labor, or the brilliant creation of our working mind in solitude.

Knowing that this is so far from the truth; knowing that this world of ours is not truly ours but His; knowing that we should give thanks to each other for what we each add to our world by our talents and our love, and ultimately, giving thanks to God - for the wonder that is life, that is science, that is family, that is nature, that is play, that is art, that is conversation - for that which is the deep and beautiful connection between all things living and all things provided - this is humility. This is love for others. This is joyfulness to God. This is, in its basic and broadest essence, gratitude: true, affectionate, unbridled, jubilant thankfulness for all things, great and small.

I am awake and alive as I look about me, right now, as if I had never seen our world this way before. In this very moment, as Addy lay sleeping on the couch after a long afternoon of play, I thank God that she earlier asked me her question, and that she resides in a place where holy curiosity is her instinct and not in a place where she offers all the answers. I feel called to go there, to run to where she is, inside that vivid place of holy curiosity and instinctive wonder, and to love in gratitude, this world, simply - as if I was a child. Because, in God's eyes, I am.