
At a certain age, gifts are either thoughtful or pointless. There’s really no in-between for me (that’s how men’s brains work,) and you, kiddo, already have a car and we already have a plan for gas and insurance and you have a closet full of clothes and shoes and a nice phone and a computer and you could not ask for a better place to live.
Well, I guess you would love a little more freedom from the two toddlers running around this house, but there are some things you just have to get over. I doubt we give them away.
The point is, you have everything, and you may or may not realize that yet. At 16, I was just like you. I had everything I could ever imagine, but as a teenager, I didn’t know that either.
What’s sad about that, and what inspired me to write this rather than try to find some meaningless gift, is that it took me a quarter of a century after that ever-important sixteenth birthday to even BEGIN to understand gratefulness. I didn’t know how or why to be truly thankful for what I had (and that’s not my parents’ fault – they tried.)
And part of that gratefulness – perhaps the hardest part – is learning how to be thankful in the present, not just the past. It’s a VERY uncommon trait for adults and almost unheard of for teenagers, but if you somehow become that one in a million kid that understands and feels and oozes gratefulness at an early age, you can alter your entire course for the better. Not only that, you can have a gigantic impact on the people around you.
These are just my thoughts on it. I hope if you’re ever in need, these words will lift you up.
What Does Gratefulness Look Like?
I started with this question because it doesn’t have an answer. Well, it does, but it’s going to be different for you than other people. It’s unique for everybody.
You know how we’ve talked about before that what we see on social media is just the good stuff? You see only a person’s “good side” in pics, you see pics that have been doctored so much you wouldn’t recognize them without advanced pixelization, you see only the stories of success, you spend five hours a day mired in either jealousy or desire.
It’s not real. It’s absolutely NOT a glimpse of reality. You don’t see the warts, the chafing, the hemorrhoids, the zits, the mental illness, the depression, the suicidal thoughts, the issues with body image, the sadness, the rage, the envy. You will NOT meet a person in your entire time on this Earth who doesn’t have a bunch of crap hidden behind the scenes. Heck, I’m your father and I raised you by myself for six years and we’ve been almost inseparable for a year because of this pandemic, and you’ll never know all my crap.
Why? Because I don’t want you to. Neither does anybody else. Remember that.
And also remember this. The crap almost never lasts as long as the blessings. Figuring out how you acknowledge that in your own life is what the foundation of gratefulness looks like. And when you have a foundation, you begin to build the walls of gratefulness that will never be completed. That’s the point, by the way. You’ll never stop building upon gratefulness.
Don’t Get Bogged Down on Those You Perceive to be Less Fortunate
In a nutshell, it’s not your job to determine if they are or are not less fortunate than you. This, of course, requires a definition of the ubiquitous “they,” but you already know what I mean.
“They” are the people you will encounter every day of your life. The man who probably lost his legs in a war, the kid in the wheelchair, the commercial on television that shows all the starving kids, the homeless man holding the sign. That’s not the only list, though. Some are in your life far more directly. The friend you assume has issues at home, the guy at school who gets picked on for being obese, the girl in your homeroom that always sits by herself and never talks.
Unless you get to know these people – and I mean REALLY get to know them – you have no idea if they are truly less fortunate. A man who lives in a trailer with three walls but spends five days a week working at a homeless shelter might be a hell of a lot happier than a millionaire who spends every single night with a gun in one hand and liquor in the other. The starving kid on television might be the most popular kid on the stickball playground and go to bed every night with very real dreams of becoming a baseball player once his aunt and uncle become citizens and take him to a better country.
It’s hard sometimes to be grateful for what you have when you see others who can’t possibly have any reason to be grateful, but if you let that hinder your own gratefulness, you’re being horribly unfair to yourself.
You cannot and will not save everybody, you cannot give people what you cannot afford to give, and you will never be able to save those you can if you’ve never figured out how to live in the present and be grateful for the blessings by which your support of them is most meaningful.
Because honestly, often the best way to lend a helping hand to those you perceive to be less fortunate is just to offer a smile. You will learn to decipher between the ones you truly believe need your help, the ones who don’t want it, the ones who don’t need it, and the ones who will abuse what you have to offer.
None of them should darken your own gratefulness, though. Your life, your blessings, and yes, even your crap, are unique ONLY to you. It’s quite literally nobody else’s job to help or hinder your gratefulness. It’s your job to learn that there are only two options under the heading of gratefulness anyway. You can choose to be grateful or you can choose to be ungrateful.
I will not try to equate gratefulness with happiness because I know all too well how hard it is to defeat depression, but let’s eliminate the gray areas for a moment. If you want to be happy – if you want to defeat any depression that might ever seep in – do you think gratefulness or its opposite would be the better avenue towards achieving it?
The Dichotomy Between Dreams and Gratefulness
A person has to be confident to have dreams, but somehow they must be as tough as a rhino when those dreams don’t come true. It’s impossible to know just how many dreams you have running around in your head right now, but I know there are at least a few.
And at least a couple of those will NOT come true. I hope not anyway. If they all come true, you aren’t dreaming big enough.
The ones that don’t come true might be the big ones or the minor ones, but even when you go to order a shirt you’ve been wanting and they don’t have your size, it can be deflating and disappointing. In its own minor way, your desire for that shirt was a dream, and that dream didn’t come true.
You know I can’t stand to sound like other people, and I hate trite, pedestrian advice, but sometimes such advice is warranted. In this frivolous example, be grateful you have clothes, be grateful you have the internet access to go online and search for that shirt, be grateful you have two arms to stick through the arm holes in the shirts you have.
Blah. That was a painful paragraph to write. I felt like I was writing a sermon stolen from the weekly theme of Sesame Street. But it was necessary. Those are VERY real reasons to be grateful. But they aren’t deep enough for a mind like yours. I know you well enough to know that. I also know that since we are so similar, I don’t want you looking back on your life at 43 years old wondering why you’re just now figuring out how to be grateful.
So let’s go beyond it. Let’s think of dreams both big and small and do gratefulness differently. Because since you’re so much like me, if somebody tells you to be thankful for internet access, you might want to punch them in the throat.
So let’s be thankful for anger.
I know you have a gigantic dream to go to UNC in two years. It’s probably your biggest dream and the one you truly work your butt off to obtain. What happens if you don’t get in?
I will tell you right now that if that happens, you have my permission to be angry. I see how hard you work, I see how you dive into extracurricular activities to pad your resume, I see how competitive you are, I see how a 92 in a class pisses you off because you know I’m going to say something like, “In my day, that was a B.”
(I’m not sorry for saying that, by the way. A fact is a fact.) 🙂
But the reality is, you might not get into Carolina. It could happen. And if you don’t, I want you to get mad because anger is one of the best known prescriptions for improving yourself, even when you can’t imagine working harder than you’ve already worked.
It’s taken me a LONG time to understand why I have failed so much in my life, and it’s going to sound REALLY strange that I hope you fail some, too, but I can honestly say that I hope you don’t succeed at all of your dreams. One day – even if that day is not today – you’ll agree with me. And you’ll be grateful that you failed.
Happy Birthday, Kiddo
I know this is a weird gift, but it’s the most meaningful gift I can give you. And if you’re wondering if this might be the start of other such gifts for important dates, you probably already know the answer to that. It’s either this or a gift card.
So I wish for you the blessing of eternal gratefulness, or at the very least, a recognizable path towards achieving it.
I wish for you a life where you can isolate those things that make you ungrateful. Only then will you understand how to be grateful. Only then will you be able to possess the world’s only definition for gratefulness in your own life.
I wish for you a life where you have suffered for the perceived misfortunes of others, especially when they did not know it. I wish for you a life where many of those same people prove you wrong. Only then will you understand that it’s not your job to feel ungratefulness for others. Only then will you understand that you are the only person on Earth who can define your own gratefulness.
I wish for you a life where you fail often. Only then will you show your true strength. Only then will you be able to live for today with a fervor you will never be able to grant to tomorrow.
I don’t wish for you a life better than mine. I’ve been blessed every step of the way. Certainly I hope you make a few better choices than I’ve made, but I know you’ll make bad choices, too. And you’ll most likely recover from them. I do, however, wish for you a life where you defeat all odds and live with a gratefulness that took me far too long to recognize.
And FYI, I still fail at it every single day. I still fail at being grateful. But I’m closer than I was yesterday. And yes, I cried writing this because I’m just going to do that and I don’t really try to even hide it anymore.
I’m grateful for my tears. I’m grateful that they come from a place of unfailing love. I’m even more grateful that you’re my daughter. I love you, kiddo.
Happy Birthday Caroline!
Your Dad just gave you the BEST gift ever! What a thoughtful gift from his heart and soul!
Love you sweet girl!
Necy