Gratitude wants to dance. With me. She keeps circling around, looking over at me in my chair along the wall…
Nothing dramatic happened today. I only woke up conscious and breathing while 100 million neurons began their daily dance with the other 10 trillion of my cells, and by the way that’s not counting the 100 trillion cells I’m carrying around that aren’t human but are dancing with me anyway, or that all this dancing came to pass after my ancestors spent 2½ billion years figuring out how to be better dancers. Nothing to see here. Go back to sleep.
Photo: Olivia Bauso/Unsplash
But I can’t sleep. Because despite a seemingly infinite list of very large reasons to be grateful, for me the feeling of gratitude is often as elusive as a bittern in brown cattails, tiny kinglets flitting high in conifers, or a gray mule deer bedded in sagebrush. Yet Gratitude wants to dance. With me. She keeps circling around, looking over at me in my chair along the wall. I don’t want to dance. The idea of dancing with Gratitude makes me self-conscious. Maybe if I knew her better, if she lived next door, if she were my sister or cousin or coworker. Maybe if everyone else I knew were dancing, then I could relax. I could dance.
Maybe I should think this one through, rather than saying no simply because I don’t feel like dancing. I’m thinking I should drag myself out of this comfortable curmudgeonly chair where I keep the wallflowers watered, partner up with Gratitude, and go for it. A-one-and-a-two-and-a … slow, slow, quick, quick. While I sit and think, writer David Whyte flows by with Gratitude in his arms:
[Gratitude] is not a passive response to something given to us, gratitude is being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us. Gratitude is not something that is shown after the event, it is the deep, a priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life.
At first I avert my eyes from the beauty of words in motion. I cringe in self-doubt. Finally, I force myself to watch the other dancers, try to learn the steps, to understand. A priori state. Gifted nature of life.
Many gifts have been, are, and will be given, regardless of how I feel or whether I understand them.
My first tentative foot goes forward. Many gifts have been, are, and will be given, regardless of how I feel or whether I understand them. Oxygen molecules surge through lungs and into cells that are already dancing. Slow, slow. My life is a gift that came to me from other life that came before me and lives around me. These things have already happened and are happening. Nothing about this reality is altered by how I feel. My feelings about dancing are beside the point. All that is required is my attention to the facts of my existence. Quick, quick. The complex rational music of biology tells me that some portion of 3 million bits of DNA is organized into 25,000 functioning genes all packaged into 23 chromosomes that have been waltzing together nearly flawlessly since I was conceived. This focus on facts seems ironic because usually I think that emotion, rather than knowledge, is the juice that keeps us moving, the electricity that sparks action.
Dancing with Gratitude requires anchors to the rock-solid, fundamental state of gratefulness that exists beyond my feelings. Lateral thinking often helps. Sometimes we feel as though we are “in love.” Yet most of us will admit that there are mornings when we wake up grouchy after a lousy night’s sleep, look at the person next to us, and feel nothing but a compulsion to be alone. Sometimes we feel as though we’ve done the dishes or picked up the dirty underwear or vacuumed the floors one too damn many times. But our long-term relationship with that person is not based on one bad morning or too many dirty dishes. It is the commitment to love that keeps us in the game, carries us through these emotional missteps. For me, gratitude is like love. Sometimes I feel grateful. Often I don’t. But I can recognize and commit to the idea that every breath I take on this outrageous blue rock brimming with life that supports my life while hurtling through lifeless space is a gift. This reality of my existence is beyond my feelings in any moment.
I won’t breathe forever, but today I do. I trust there is another breath coming and commit to being thankful for it.
Photo: Dexter Fernandes/Unsplash
A commitment to gratitude strikes me as something like faith. This is faith in its broadest sense, the trust a two-year-old will place in his parents to have that bowl of oatmeal ready every morning. Faith isn’t necessarily blind; it simply calls me to recognize that I’m alive, right now. I just took a breath. Then another. I took a lot of breaths before that one, and a multitude of breaths were taken by my ancestors who were breathing before me. I won’t breathe forever, but today I do. I trust there is another breath coming and commit to being thankful for it.
Nearly two thousand years ago, Paul wrote on faith, hope, and love. Should gratitude be placed on this list of elemental emotions, emotions so fundamental to the human experience that they supersede feeling? Do we decide to have faith or to feel faithful? Do we decide to be hopeful or to feel hope? Do we decide to love or to feel love? Do we decide to be grateful or to feel gratitude? In all cases, I think the answers are yes and yes. Not necessarily in that order.
All of this decision making and commitment to gratitude seems awfully bullheaded. Then something of a miracle happens. Gratitude returns to where I am sitting. She is clad in a blue-green gown swirling like fog chased by sunlight. She is bolder this time, reaching one arm toward me. I take her hand, begin to stand, and am lifted from my chair. Slow, slow, quick, quick. Beyond my writing window a flamingo sunrise lifts his head, then stretches pink wings across the eastern ridge.
Gratitude and I are dancing.
Tom A. Titus is a grateful writer, runner, forager, father, grandfather, Ph.D. geneticist, and free-range philosopher who writes at the messy interface of human experience and the natural world. His recent book, Palindrome: Grateful Reflections from the Home Ground, is a collection of short essays and poems reveling in the emerald ripple of the Pacific Northwest. Tom is co-creator of The Nature of Gratitude, a program of poetry, prose, music, and spoken word celebrating our grateful presence in the world. To learn more, visit: tomatitus.com.
I remember Gratitude dancing with me. She’s not afraid of my wheelchair. She knows she has no need to be, and I’m extremely grateful for that.
Drew, what a lovely reflection! To be grateful for the that bedrock form of gratitude that dances with us despite our personal circumstances is appreciation with very deep roots. Thank you for that reminder!
A truly marvellous piece. I love the occasional reference to neurons, cells, DNA, the stuff we are made of. The science inspires awe. .
Thank you, Cailinrua! Yes, the science is awe inspiring. And many scientists I know are routinely awestruck by the things they learn. As a scientist myself, I’ve always been intrigued by the cultural disconnect between that feeling of awe and the dispassionate language science uses to communicate discovery. Science needs bridge-builders who are willing to translate that emotional connection to the world into a music of words so that everyone can dance.