Gratitude

Thank You

In April of 2018, I was on a flight from Seoul to Seattle. I wasn't having a good day. That day was the latest in a series of difficult days. Forty thousand feet over the ocean, somewhere between the end of Russia and the beginning of the United States, I had a clear thought. Out of the depths of my brain, and under the impression that I had found the solution to my problems, it arrived.

"I'm going to commit myself to an institution."

I saw myself getting off the plane, spending the night at my friend's house, and getting a ride to somewhere. Some kind of a big building, with a bright, wide, clean hallway that wound up in front of an impressive counter, framed in oak. There, I would fill out an intake form, meet with a psychiatrist, surrender my shoelaces, and at last be done.

Before I did that, I talked about my plan with a friend of mine from Orcas. I only have a vague memory of that conversation, but I think the essence of it was this: "Come home for two weeks, and if you still want to go, I'll take you."

He also told me that, while it would be fairly easy to get in, I wouldn't be the one deciding when I got out. He asked if I remembered Randell McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? I did, and that got my attention.

Fast forward: I make it back to Orcas. I have a job and a very nice place to live. I have a motorcycle that has been gifted to me, so I can get back and forth to work. Things are going better than they have in a long time.

Due solely to my nature, it didn't continue. I made a last mistake in a series of mistakes, and the bottom fell out of my world. The person that I held most dear was at risk of being taken away from me. There was no clear outcome, and there wouldn't be for quite a while.

I wouldn't know this until a few years later, but it is highly likely that I had been living in a state of clinical depression—I had experienced a reprieve, and now I was going back into it with a vengeance. I began living in a bleak world. A world without color or joy.

Getting out of bed by 10:00 was a victory. Exiting my small apartment at 1:00 was the best I could do. I only managed to work for two to three hours a day. In hindsight, there was a disturbing aspect to this time in my life. It went on long enough that it became normal.

I knew I wasn't doing well. I thought I was putting on a good face in public, but I've since found out that might not be accurate. It certainly wasn't true when I was with a particular group of trusted friends.

The good news is that I'm not like that now. I have a life that I'm very grateful for.

To get here, I went through a brutal process of pulling back the curtain. I don't use the word brutal lightly. For me, it is important not to be overly dramatic about this part of my life, but it is critical that I don't minimize it. I'm part of the world now, and I was far from that in 2018.

One of the keys to being able to make this journey started on one of those gray mornings. I had no intention of doing what I did. Maybe it came to me out of nowhere, but as I sit here now, I think it is more likely that it had been roaming around in the back of my head for decades. Nevertheless, here it was.

I began to make a list of the things I was grateful for. I'm not sure how I was able to do this while my life continued to be deconstructed, so I’m chalking that one up to providence.

In my lethargic and apathetic frame of mind, the idea of gratitude came to me wearing a coat of nonchalance. And so, without knowing how vital this would become, I opened up a fresh page in Google Docs and typed, "A comfortable bed." That one line opened the door just enough that more came to mind.

When I came back to Orcas, I did what I knew how to do—construction. A mainstay in my ability to be in the trades is a good carpenter's pencil. To qualify, it has to be made out of real wood.

In 1979, when I first started, it had to be made out of plain wood, because I thought that looked more like a real carpenter's pencil. After a time, I favored a white pencil because A) they gave them to me for free at the hardware store, and B) it was easier to find when I dropped it on the ground.

Now, since I was starting over, I ordered six dozen pencils made from real wood and painted a bright fluorescent lime green. I love these pencils—very much. They went on the list. Most days, they would go on the list. I was never shy about being repetitive.

The rest of the list was made up of other ordinary things. The microwave, my toothbrush, the shower that came with the apartment, and the towel that came with the shower. After a time, people began to populate the list. And then places.

I usually don't stick with things, but I stuck with this. Even though I was going through a 'dark night of the soul,' I kept making the list. Every morning.

Very slowly, despite my limited, awful perception, I began to be grateful for my life. I would pull out one of these silly, fluorescent green pencils and smile.

Smiles were rare those days, but my carpenter's pencil always brought one to me. When I would make oatmeal in the microwave, I would smile because I had a microwave, oatmeal, and a bowl to cook it in.

As I'm writing this six years later, the list seems like such a simple idea, but it was one of the keys that made it possible for me to see my world as fulfilling rather than wretched.

After three months, everywhere I would turn, I saw something, someone, or somewhere that I was grateful for.

As a practice, I would imagine myself having absolutely nothing, and then someone would say, "Here, you can be friends with Gene Nery," and my heart would expand. "Here, you can have long johns so you won't freeze when you ride your motorcycle to Deer Harbor." "Here, you can have the internet, so you can talk to your daughter in Bali."

That small thing meant so much to me, but until I began to focus on gratitude, I didn't know it.

I can still be petty and judgmental. I can still be sullen and depressed. But since then, these moods have been short-lived because they are all tempered with gratitude.

I haven't practiced making the list consistently since those six months in 2018, but as a good friend predicted, that winter and spring infused gratitude into my being.

I don't know that everyone on the planet has something to be grateful for. That would be an awfully bold assumption. So, I can't offer this as a cure-all.

Here's what I do know. In a dark time, an idea came to me, unbidden. Without discipline or dedication, I managed to produce a list every day for six months. It changed my life. Thank you.