gratitude, guilt, and gathering good things

The other weekend at the writers’ colony, I co-hosted a retreat on the gathering of joy and delight, based on Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights and Inciting Joy. In teaching these subjects, I realized I’m actually pretty good at noticing delightful things. Heck, that’s what I try and share with y’all here - the simple and good of life - the goats, the glimmers, the gratuitous musings of my country life. Some of the things we explored over the course of the day included the importance of being present in order to truly see, the fusion of joy and sorrow (both relate to what matters most in our lives), and the way that gratitude is most often a conduit to the positive feelings we experience when we are delighted by something.

The surprising concept that eventually came up was guilt. As in, perhaps we don’t experience joy because we feel like we shouldn’t. Or perhaps we shouldn’t partake in a delight because it feels flippant and unimportant. Or perhaps we disallow ourselves the pleasure of a good day because so many other people out there have it so much worse, and to enjoy all that we have (#blessed) can appear ignorant of the real horrors and struggles of the world at large.

I wonder, how often does guilt keep you from good things? I know for me, guilt often leads to overwork, towards using my one day off for chores (as opposed to rest), towards not doing the things I want because I’d feel selfish for putting myself first. Sometimes, guilt makes me afraid to speak the truth. Sometimes, it thrusts me into situations I don’t want to be in. And almost always, doing these things with guilt in tow only makes it worse.

I’ve been in a bit of a personal rut lately. I’ve been busy, just like many of you, and I know it’s only going to get busier. I wake up, go to work, come home, squeeze in a quick solitary walk before the sun sets, make dinner, and try to relax with episodes of Little House on the Prairie (which, it turns out, is quite an anxiety-inducing show). The things that should feel good just feel like triggers, and I get frustrated with myself, like I should be doing more, like everything’s coming to a close and I still haven’t accomplished enough this year. But looking back, it’s been a big year, with a lot of hiccups survived along the way. I look around and find that I have just about everything I could want. Even in the thick of it, I can’t say it’s all that bad, and that, my friends, brings me to the subject of gratitude.

A unique perspective for Thanksgiving, amiright? But seriously, y’all.

Gratitude is one of those words that brings me both warmth and a little bit of ick. So often, it can feel trite, dishonest, or even a little too “Look at Me!”

But gratitude, when done “right,” is more than that. It’s about noticing. It’s about sitting in a present moment and - despite all the crazy, all the busy, all the stress - realizing that there is something truly remarkable about these lives we’re living.

True gratitude - the kind that brings us our own unique sense of joy - feels to me a little bit different than the vague sense we get when we’re asked to say what we’re thankful for at the Thanksgiving table. It runs deeper. It notices how healing the sunlight feels after one-too-many grey days. It takes into consideration the fact that your friends and family love you even if you haven’t called them lately, even if you’ve been a little moody, even if the green beans are too salty, even if you don’t feel worthy of being loved at all - and that you are able to love them that way, too. Gratitude doesn’t value money or status or stability; it sees how hard you’re working to build a life, no matter how small. It knows how far you’ve come. Gratitude sees things others don’t see. It listens to birds. It marvels at changing leaves. It embraces the stick season because it knows that blooms will come again.

It wants for nothing but presence, and in those moments when you are perfectly content, it gathers good things and stores them up for one of those cold, rainy, difficult days when you need a joyful thought because it might be one of the only things that can actually get you through.

And you shouldn’t feel guilty for that. Even when everything else around you seems really, really bad.

The other night, I was taking one of my rushed after-work walks, trying to get in another 5,000 steps before 5 PM. I was watching my feet, making sure I didn’t trip on the gravel, ritualistically touching the gate as I turned to complete my lap, when I caught a glimpse of brilliant color over the trees. Behind the remaining orange leaves was a sunset of deep pink, orange, and blue. I stopped walking and pulled out my phone to capture it, the worry over step counts abandoning my mind. I walked a little further, snapped another photo from a new angle. I didn’t need to share it - I just wanted to remember it.

By the time I finished that lap and returned to the same spot, the sky was grey with the approaching night. The sunset was entirely gone. How special it had felt to receive that gift before it disappeared. How much more I could’ve enjoyed it if I’d gotten out of my head a little bit sooner.