Virtue Quest

I’ve been meditating on a passage from the Bible:

What have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift? (1 Corinthians 4.1; RSV)

It occurred to me that most of my own vices come from the desire to have something that is my own, something that I have accomplished by my own power or that I have made for myself. But since my very life is a gift, and my ability to do anything at all – to think or to work with my hands, to say nothing of the availability of the internet or even of language – all this is something given to me, not something I have made or could have made on my own, then I have no grounds for claiming anything in the world as entirely my own.

I have contributed to many good things. I have used my gifts well (and badly too, but that’s another post). But none of it is mine in the sense that I desire it to be. And that’s because my desire is out of step with reality.

Instead, it is mine as a gift to me. It is mine as something I have received, whether from my parents or from my friends or from the society that I live in or from God. So, instead of claiming it as my own, I will practice being grateful for it. After all, that’s the proper attitude toward a gift.

Tomorrow, that is, on the first day of July, I will awaken as a published author.

Sure, this blog is a publication of sorts. But I’m of the old school that believes you’re not really published until someone else – indeed, someone not related to you or biased by friendship – decides your work is worth putting out there. For me, that will happen tomorrow.

Where? you might ask. In a small on-line journal called This Great Society. It’s a quirky little corner of the internet, and well worth a read. I hope that recommendation includes even my own contribution to the issue.

My essay is entitled “Following Distance” and is a kind of meditation on the psychology of driving. I note that the space that separates cars on the road is also a medium of communication, and that giving another driver room is a sign of respect.

This message could not arrive at a more perfect time for me. On Monday, as I was driving home from work, I got in a fender-bender. I rear-ended the car in front of me. Fortunately, no one was hurt and the damage seemed minimal. (I left a pair of dimples on the other car’s bumper in the exact shape of the bolts holding on my front license plate.) And although the other driver called the police, I didn’t receive a ticket. The officer let me off with a warning, for “following too close.”

Today is Memorial Day in the U.S.A., the day on which we remember the members of our armed services who have given their lives in the defense of our nation.

Just want to add my thanks to those of all the rest of the nation, and to let any current soldiers who happen to read this that you are in my prayers.

I had a great conversation with a friend this morning. She pointed out to me that none of us choose to be here – either in the sense of being born in the first place, or where we happen to be in a job or family or what not. My situation in life is not something I have much control over, and most of it I have absolutely no control over.

And I realized that, till recently anyway, I have been harboring resentment about that. It made me feel powerless and frustrated. I wanted more control. I wanted to be where I chose to be, rather than where I was.

But there’s another way of looking at it: my life, and my situation in life is a gift. It’s both a gift to me, in that there is a great deal of good – comfort, love, friendship, and so on – in my life; and it’s a gift to others, in that I have good things to give to the people I encounter every day.

Yep, I’m God’s gift to the world.

But then again, so is everyone else. You’re God’s gift to me, for example. So it’s not that big a deal.

Anyway, I just realize that I need to shift my attitude from resentment, which is focused on what I don’t have, to gratitude, which is focused on what I do have. And that’s more realistic anyway: what I do have is real, but what I don’t have is a product of my imagination.

For my small handful of international readers, this week the U.S. is celebrating its Thanksgiving holiday. It’s one of the few holidays on the national calendar that truly deserves the name: it is a day dedicated to a holy act – giving thanks for the good we have received.

The attitude of gratitude

I find it ironic that a festival for giving thanks has both taken deep cultural root in the U.S. and even has become a civil holiday. Why? Because “the American dream” is so rooted in self-reliance, in pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps, in the notion of independence. The American ideal is to take what one earns rather than to receive what one is given.

But I think most people – American or otherwise – are too wise to believe all that. I’m certainly aware of how much I have been given without a hint of deserving or earning on my part: my very life, to begin with; my education; the love of my friends and family; the benefits of growing up in the late twentieth century in the wealthiest nation on the planet.

I think there are two ways to show gratitude: first is to rejoice at the gift, and to celebrate the one who gave you the gift; the second way is to use the gift, to unwrap it and give it a place in your life. In other words, when Grandma gives you a sweater, you tell her “Thank you” and then you wear it the next time you see her.

Developing the virtue of gratitude

For much of my life, I felt guilty about all the gifts I’d been given. I actually hated my birthday and Christmas because I had done nothing to deserve the presents I received. I somehow felt like they weren’t actually mine if I hadn’t earned them.

In other words, I’d let the “American ideal” overcome the natural order of things in my life.

Needless to say, “Thank you” did not come easily from my lips – until I realized that gifts are the most natural thing in the world. I realized that gifts always come before accomplishments or “earnings”. And that almost all the anxiety and frustration in my life came from refusing to receive anything as a gift.

So, over the past few years, I’ve been practicing the virtue of gratitude. I don’t mean just saying “Thank you.” I mean pushing aside that feeling of unworthiness and focusing on the goodness of the gift. This is even true of gifts that I don’t want or that are useless to me: I can focus on the love that someone is expressing by giving me something.

And, like all virtues, it grows with practice. By receiving small gifts, physical gifts, I find it’s easier to see the less tangible gifts. I find it’s easier to rejoice in my family, my friends, even co-workers and colleagues. I find it’s easier to see what is good in my church, my country, my home. I find it easier to give thanks for my own life, and I want to use my life for a good purpose.