This post was originally published in November of 2016 on another platform:
This year for Thanksgiving we drove to Atlanta to visit with some of our family. From our house in Virginia, that’s a 10-hour drive on a good day. As you might guess, with the holiday traffic it took longer. That amount of time leads to good conversation, but you can’t talk the whole time, especially when your wife drifts off to sleep. The result is some quality windshield time lost in thought.
Part of the time I was considering what it means to be grateful. My thoughts on many topics eventually find expression in continua. It’s just the way I think about topics that are scalable or relative to some norm. Perhaps gratitude relates to two continua. One might be describing the reality of our life. The other, our perception of our life.
Life’s reality continuum might be bounded by extremes. On one end, everything goes perfectly. We have all we need of material goods, loving relationships, spiritual fulfillment, and intellectual stimulation. We could think of this end of the continuum as the “blessed” experience. At the other extreme, nothing goes right. No matter our efforts we are alone. All our attempts fail, and others actively hamper us. We could call this end of the continuum line “cursed.”
Our perception continuum could be similar. The positive end might be called “Pollyanna” and it means that we only see the good in our life. No matter how bad it is we turn a blind eye to anything that could be considered negative. The other end might be dubbed “gloom and doom.” No matter what good things go on around us we think all is lost, nobody cares, life is better off without me. Seems to me if we approach either end of this continuum we are losing touch with reality.
I have no proof, but I think it’s safe to assume that we all fall somewhere between both the reality extremes and the perception extremes. We all probably have challenges and struggles. We probably also have good things around us. My guess is that where we fall on the line along the blessed/cursed scale or the Pollyanna/gloom-and-doom scale will vary from day to day.
Regardless where we land in the reality scale our perceptions may not correlate. Perhaps our task is to try to get our perceptions to line up with reality. If we can acknowledge the bad in life we are being realistic, but if we are only noticing the bad we are also being ungrateful. If we only notice the good then we are less likely to grow. Overcoming challenges or difficulties is how we gain strength. If we ignore them then we won’t work to make things better.
I guess my windshield philosophical musings led me to deduce that having gratitude is simply being realistic. Acknowledging both the good and bad in life, then working to improve on the bad, is being grateful. We can be thankful for the good things that bring us joy, and we can be thankful for the bad if we use it as a tool to become better.
This year for Thanksgiving we drove to Atlanta to visit with some of our family. From our house in Virginia, that’s a 10-hour drive on a good day. As you might guess, with the holiday traffic it took longer. That amount of time leads to good conversation, but you can’t talk the whole time, especially when your wife drifts off to sleep. The result is some quality windshield time lost in thought.
Part of the time I was considering what it means to be grateful. My thoughts on many topics eventually find expression in continua. It’s just the way I think about topics that are scalable or relative to some norm. Perhaps gratitude relates to two continua. One might be describing the reality of our life. The other, our perception of our life.
Life’s reality continuum might be bounded by extremes. On one end, everything goes perfectly. We have all we need of material goods, loving relationships, spiritual fulfillment, and intellectual stimulation. We could think of this end of the continuum as the “blessed” experience. At the other extreme, nothing goes right. No matter our efforts we are alone. All our attempts fail, and others actively hamper us. We could call this end of the continuum line “cursed.”
Our perception continuum could be similar. The positive end might be called “Pollyanna” and it means that we only see the good in our life. No matter how bad it is we turn a blind eye to anything that could be considered negative. The other end might be dubbed “gloom and doom.” No matter what good things go on around us we think all is lost, nobody cares, life is better off without me. Seems to me if we approach either end of this continuum we are losing touch with reality.
I have no proof, but I think it’s safe to assume that we all fall somewhere between both the reality extremes and the perception extremes. We all probably have challenges and struggles. We probably also have good things around us. My guess is that where we fall on the line along the blessed/cursed scale or the Pollyanna/gloom-and-doom scale will vary from day to day.
Regardless where we land in the reality scale our perceptions may not correlate. Perhaps our task is to try to get our perceptions to line up with reality. If we can acknowledge the bad in life we are being realistic, but if we are only noticing the bad we are also being ungrateful. If we only notice the good then we are less likely to grow. Overcoming challenges or difficulties is how we gain strength. If we ignore them then we won’t work to make things better.
I guess my windshield philosophical musings led me to deduce that having gratitude is simply being realistic. Acknowledging both the good and bad in life, then working to improve on the bad, is being grateful. We can be thankful for the good things that bring us joy, and we can be thankful for the bad if we use it as a tool to become better.
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