On For Grantedness

Finding secular thankfulness

When was the last time you had a cold, sinus infection, or a really bad week of allergies?

Your head probably felt wrecked. Perhaps you couldn’t breathe from your nose at all, you had a headache, and you were constantly blowing your nose. In those times of illness, I know if I’m able to get a single breathe in from my nose, I feel thankful. “I never appreciate how good it feels to be able to simply breathe through my nose,” I’ll often think.

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Some day, every parent picks up their child for the last time. The day when a mother goes to pick up her son and struggles more than she ever had before after putting him down—does the mother realize that she will never lift up her son again?

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Have you ever broken a bone?

I’ve broken a knuckle, a thumb, and my arm. I’ve had some close calls with ankles and knees that have left me immobilized for a few days and limping for weeks. When you’re in a hand cast, you want nothing more than to be able to move your fingers. When you’ve got an ice pack wrapped around a sprained ankle, figuratively chained to a couch, you want nothing more than to be able to run (or at least walk) freely.

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According to Facebook, I’ve got 1,299 friends. Undoubtedly, this list could use some pruning, but it seems safe to say that I’ve met a lot of people over the years, many more than Dunbar’s Number, “the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar” (around 150 people).

How often have people drifted in and out of my immediate social circle? Pretty often. Since I opened my Facebook account, I’ve graduated middle and high school, moved to Virginia where I attended undergraduate and graduate school followed by starting my first job, and moved to Colorado. All of these events represent a lot of change not only in my life, but in the lives of those that I call my friends. There are people that I used to count among my circle of closest confidants that I have not seen in years. Likely, there are people that I may never see or speak to again that I once interacted with on a daily basis. Did I that it would be the last time I saw them when we last said goodbye?

Me, Dylan, and my mom at a Dave Matthews Band concert

The last time I saw Dylan Price, my friend who died from complications from leukemia in 2013, I walked past him in between classes in high school, exchanging a simple greeting after having skipped going to the soup kitchen with him early that morning. That evening, he died from a heart attack. I didn’t know that passing hello would be the last time I saw him.

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Something that the religious world does a really good job of doing is promoting thanks. Growing up as a Protestant Christian, I was taught to say what I was thankful for in a prayer every night and to say a blessing before eating food with family, often expressing thanks for the hands that prepared it. The Muslim salah, the five daily prayers that form part of the foundational practice of Islam, makes the praise of Allah and Muhammad an integral part of a Muslim’s daily routine. Jews have prayers for everything: waking up, seeing a rainbow, lighting the candles at Hannukah, surviving near-death experiences, seeing a body of water for the first time in thirty days, even having a good bowel movement:

Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, King of the universe, Who formed man with wisdom and created within him many openings and many hollow spaces. It is obvious and known before Your Seat of Honor that if even one of them would be opened, or if even one of them would be sealed, it would be impossible to survive and to stand before You even for one hour. Blessed are You, Adonai, Who heals all flesh and acts wondrously.

Secular thankfulness is hard to come by. What do we have in secular America other than Thanksgiving? One day every year to give thanks, mostly for overeating, compared to Muslims praying five times a day and Jews having a prayer for everything! Mindfulness-type spirituality purports to promote secular, or at least areligious, thankfulness but this New Age-mindfulness approach isn’t attractive to everyone, myself included. I think it is no wonder that it is so easy to take things for granted; the average lifestyle has no rituals, routines, or practices built in to highlight the value of the mundane.

I’m lucky enough to live with three of my best friends right now. How often do I really appreciate that? How often do I reach out to friends who live in different states? Grandparents, aunts and uncles? My parents? When I’m on a run, how often am I aware of the functioning of my legs? On that run, looking at the skyline of the Flatirons and the mountains beyond, how often am I consciously thankful that I have the vision to see them?

There are a lot of ways one could attempt to build into their life rituals to promote thankfulness. I don’t think it’s particularly hard to think of ways to do it. What is hard is actually doing it. I’ve got a few ideas in mind; I hope I will stick to them.