How Gratitude Lists Changed My Life
Today I’d like to begin with a question. What are you thankful for? What would be the first four things on your list?
Oh How I Love You Space Heater
As the Seattle daylight hours have diminish to just under 10 per 24, and the temperature hovers at a wet misty near freezing, it’s not comfortable. The ease of summer clearly gone, my body has begun its annual clenching inwards, at a time it’s so crucial to keep community links open. My back is tight from yard work, and the regularity of weekly 2-5 hour stints on the road, my knees are wary from beginning to pivot and leap on the dance floor again.
And last week my furnace went out, so the cold is creeping inwards. I have to shuffle accounts, borrow money from family, and from my own future with loans in order to afford a new furnace. It’s not comfortable – in my house, or in my psyche.
But as I prepare for Thanksgiving, I am reminded how important it is to count my blessings. Not because I’m comfortable, easy, or don’t feel what I’m feeling in this moment, but because I’m more than just that.
I have a vivid memory of one time this act – counting my blessings - redirected my life.
The first job I got out of college was as a legal secretary. I romanticized the title secretary, not for the work itself, but for the idea I had that it was a job that came with a slash. Secretary/Artist; Secretary/Musician; Secretary/Writer. It was a job that didn’t answer all, even many of life’s asks. It was the most mundane job I’ve ever had. But it had an income unlike any I’d had before at that time. So I parked my 22 year old butt in that swivel chair off and on for 5 years.
But after my second year in the job, I hit a wall. I hated the work, and hated the times when I had no work to do even more. Any given afternoon, I had 2 hours of work to do, but 4 hours to fill, with a supervisor keeping tabs on my efficacy. I felt like all my post-grad dreams to create community, art, and beauty were just clouds drifting away. I wasn’t creating anything, contributing anything, and I felt truly useless. What’s the point of vision if you can’t realize it? What’s the point of talent if it’s muted?
After a successful academic life, I knew I could work hard, use strategic and creative thinking, but I really didn’t see where I belonged. I didn’t belong in the legal world. In the nonprofit world. After getting evicted from my own home, due to an owner-move-in, I felt like I belonged nowhere. In Oakland. In San Francisco. My new breakup seared the wound of identity loss, I didn’t belong with this love, and likely no others could fill the hole. I fell into a loophole of talking myself out of anything good. Pulling the seedlings before they could sprout.
But then one of my books recommended I start a gratitude list. I pulled out my yellow legal pad and began to write. The list began like this:
1. I am alive.
2. I like my name.
3. I am literate.
4. I have all my limbs.
I set the pad down on my desk and rolled back on my chair. A smile crept in and slowly turned into a laugh. In that moment, the ridiculousness of how much I was limiting myself became clear. My pain moved from grief to embarrassment, and that defrosting opened me to joy. I had put myself in this psychological straitjacket. I hadn’t allowed myself the power I actually had. I had tuned out my body in an attempt to tune out my pain. In that moment, I realized my problems were circumstances, not life sentences. I could change almost all of it. For me, the joy of this was rapturously funny, and the way through that pain was laughter.
Six months after I wrote this list, I co-produced Ladyfest Bay Area, had a new girlfriend, an amazing home in Oakland, and a plan to move to Seattle. The challenges of that offered capacity to hold uncertainty. I learned that I can’t do work I don’t love – even if it cuts into my passion projects. I learned that it’s when I most need help that it’s hardest to ask. I learned to laugh at myself, deeply.
When you list out the blessings you have, something beyond you takes over. Your perspective changes because you begin to see what is in front of you. Shutting down emotions is normal in times of pain – it’s a coping strategy that allows you to protect yourself from perceived threats. But it also protects you from joy, from growth. When you list your blessings, you realize that it’s not just you, it’s a whole world, alive and inviting, with thousands of hands to help. You are part of a system whether you choose it or not. And when you see that, your own hands, or feet, or elbows or knees, become that much more powerful.
This is the laughter born of breaking through my own limitations. Circa 2001. San Francisco.