Yesterday morning I looked out onto my patio and discovered a red Mylar balloon in the shape of a heart lazily floating to and fro in the breeze. Today it’s gone, carried away by a gust of wind.
This is New Mexico, after all: the wind giveth and the wind taketh away. The wind routinely creates “fugitive dust,” for which there is a system of warnings in place. The wind is at the top of my list of things I dislike about living here. The light is at the top of my list of things I love.
Sometimes delivery people drop off food I didn’t order, leaving it on the mat outside my front door because they only notice the letter designation of my apartment and not the number of the building. There’s no one to call, no indication of who the food was meant for. Rarely, do these delivery people ring my doorbell or knock on the door, so I have no idea how long the food has been there. I carry it across the parking lot and deposit it in the dumpster.
According to one of the articles I read on developing a gratitude practice, life owes me nothing and all the good I have is a gift.
When I entertain this notion, I’m faced with a disquieting cascade of questions I’m sure philosophers, ethicists, and religious scholars, among others, have been ruminating over for centuries.
I tend to imagine a couple of possible general scenarios. One is that someone or something is determining how “the good” should be parceled out to living creatures. (I include animals here, as it’s obvious the circumstances of their lives vary as greatly as do the circumstances of humans.) Someone who enjoys more good circumstances than bad might find this notion comforting. They wouldn’t question it, thus avoiding looking a gift horse or force in the mouth. They might feel deserving, as well as “blessed.” Maybe their good circumstances make them feel kindly toward those less blessed. Maybe they don’t.
Perhaps kindliness is what a gratitude practice is meant to foster, but there’s no indication that the extremely fortunate comprise the target audience for lessons in gratitude. In many cases it appears that the better one’s circumstances are, the less likely one is to want to share and the less grateful one is. There’s a belief, especially among the most materially fortunate that they alone are responsible for their success. So this method of distribution does not seem to be an overall plus for humanity as a whole—at least if the distributor (let’s just call it that) or distributing force might be expected to have an attitude of good will or good faith toward earth’s living creatures.
The other, equally dubious, scenario is that someone or something is indiscriminately tossing around Mylar balloons or take-out food or IQ points or loving parents or stock dividends. Maybe this distributor or distributing force isn’t paying close attention to the delivery address and isn’t concerned about whether the recipient of such a “gift” wants or needs it; what anyone ends up with is entirely random. This seems less inherently comforting than the first notion but a lot more in line with both experience and observation.
The most relevant definition of gift seems to be this one: something bestowed or acquired without being sought or earned by the receiver.
Gifts, by nature and by definition, are in the control of the giver not in the control of the receiver. We are wired to want things: that’s the definition of motivation. So it’s no easy task to persuade people to be satisfied with their lot in life—not just satisfied, but also grateful!
It’s quite natural that we would want to try to game this system. What can we do to get more gifts? If we can influence the distribution of gifts to get more, are they technically still gifts? Is this a zero-sum game or are there an unlimited number of gifts to be bestowed?
While I agree we aren’t owed anything in particular, it doesn’t then logically follow that all (everything good) we have is a “gift.” First, if this is true for one person, it’s true for everyone: everything anyone has is a gift. So: so what? Presumably everyone gets something. This is just the way the system works. We didn’t set it up and we don’t operate it. It’s literally out of our hands.
The Misery
Second, if this applies to “the good,” it must also apply to “the bad,” unless that’s a different distribution system. What, then, is the appropriate response to the bad that has been delivered to us? There’s a fad in some circles to look at difficult circumstances as “a gift,” too, but those advising us to do so are usually not the ones upon whom such misfortune has been bestowed. I think it requires a certain amount of both privilege and ignorance to adopt this attitude, and espousing it for others seems rather callous.
Yes, each of us may have our personal misfortunes to deal with, but no one reading this is hungry and tired, living in a crowded, torn tent in the winter amid rubble, dead bodies, and unexploded ordnance, wary of snipers trying to shoot us in the head should we venture out to find food for our family.
Are we supposed to be grateful for that? And if we are, what are the ramifications?
One more gratitude post to come.