Gratitude.
Gratitude is a term that many of us have heard of as constantly evolving individuals. From that first time we learn to offer a supplication after we’ve had supper as labile children to wading through challenging times with nerve and sinew, we learn to thank our parents, our peers and those around us, the support network that enables us to become strong-minded and humble individuals.
Yet, lost in the wasteland of our own self-conscious presence, trying to “bull’s-eye” all our goals and ambitions, we often forget to be thankful for the blessings that are already bestowed upon us, forgetting the very cardinal belief that we once learned as kids. It’s funny, really, how we live our whole lives in an earnest quest for the enchanting and the surreal, the fairy-tale-like success stories, but we neglect the lessons of gratitude along the way. What once is an important lesson, born and nurtured through such means as post-meal supplications and prayers, eventually becomes shrouded in oblivion, and as it does, we launch yet another brigade of search: this time, however, the search is not for a medal, a trophy, or a career-defining moment; instead, it is the search for gratitude and humility, traits that are seldom found at the minutia of the intersection of our dreams and our realities.
I couldn’t have been more humbled and in a sense mortified as I launched into a serenading conversation with my Uber driver during this spring break. He was a middle-aged man, bold and dark-haired despite his aging features, yet self-sufficient in his disposition. As he launched into a conversation about his views on the uncertainty plaguing America in the present Trump era, he seemed surprisingly sated. “I am a father to three daughters,” he began. “Although I know that things in this administration have mostly taken negative turns, I am still very grateful to have my little family who I earn for.” Noticing his pristine smile, I questioned, “ Are you able to make enough for a family of five? How do you manage all the expenses?” Turning his gaze toward me and widening his smile-curve further, he remarked, “It is hard to manage the costs sometimes, but you know I am very good at going to bed hungry. What keeps me in a state of constant gluttony even in such trying times are the smiles that I see on my daughters’ faces when I go back home with Amy’s Ice cream on Friday’s.”
And that is where I stopped, unconsciously falling into a reverie and thinking about the problems befalling my peer college students or me in general. In a fierce state of academic competition, and buried under immense peer and parental pressures, we forget to value the opportunities that we already have only to strive for the ones we think we ought to have. Yet, if one observes with a keener look, one stumbles upon the riveting conclusion that the life we are leading, the one we take so often for granted, is a dream for many others who’re suffering and fighting their battles against poverty, cancer, and innumerable other terminal illnesses and calamities. Thus, we ought to remind ourselves, constantly, of the post-meal supplications of gratitude that we once harboured but eventually forgot as we tossed toward achieving a slate of hierarchal objectives and goals.
In these times of political and economic uncertainty, gratitude is indeed a worthwhile and noteworthy attribute to observe as an inveterate part of someone who often goes to bed hungry, choosing, instead, to make his daughters sated and content.
Evidently, his faith does not waver either.
