Thank you

And, of course, happy New Year

Whenever someone starts to gob on about “gratitude” I want to kick them, particularly if they’re doing it in writing. It always seems to me like the absolute worst kind of virtue-signaling bullshit. It’s a form of air cover for both moralizing and demonstrating one’s superiority — all at once! It’s one of the very worst things about social media, baked up into a delicious little pie of self-satisfaction.

Oh, well.

Yesterday I posted a picture on social media, shot from behind, of me walking across a snowy railroad bridge in Hancock, New York, with one of my daughters. A second daughter took the picture and so is not in it. Daughter #3 (Holy shit! I have THREE DAUGHTERS!) is not in it because she was wearing nice, new boots, presumably received for Christmas, that she didn’t want to subject to wet snow. Koda, of course, is in the shot. He’s like a fourth daughter except he’s a dog, and he’s male.

In the caption, I wrote that “Words can't express how grateful I am that my life has allowed me to do this.”

That’s just the beginning.

I am sitting at a desk in a quiet, dim room. It’s around 6:15 in the morning. In about an hour, someone from Wegman’s is going to show up with a bunch of groceries I ordered last night from this very computer. I don’t have to go get them. They bring them to me, when I tell them to.

I’m listening to a Bach sonata on Amazon Music. Bach has been dead for 250 years. I know this because I just had to ask Alexa, and she told me. Alexa will tell me almost anything I ask about, from the molecular weight of aluminum to the date Nietzche was born. The sonata is being performed by a German orchestra. I’ve never been to Germany, but thanks to the elves at Amazon, I get to enjoy their talents.

I’m listening to a book (because I like to do this on hikes) about the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Ordering and downloading it took me about one minute, and I can do this anywhere there’s a cell signal, which means anywhere. In other words, I can get millions of books, basically anything I want, delivered to me on my phone, tablet or laptop in seconds. Or any piece of music. Or movie.

If I wanted to, I could hop in my car, which is full of gasoline provided by an unbelievably intricate and expensive network of oil wells, refineries, ships, trucks, pipelines, pumps and gas stations, and drive to the Met itself. It’s one of the greatest museums in the history of mankind, and I could be there for lunch, or even a late-ish breakfast.

Not brunch. I hate brunch. I agree with Anthony Bourdain that brunch is barbaric.

Barbarians, I tell you.

It’s 29 degrees out, snowy and wet and sloppy. It’s still dark. If I wanted to hike now, I could grab the flashlight that’s sitting on the credenza in this office, lace up my hiking boots (delivered by Zappos), and go out anyway. But since I don’t, I’m in this comfy, heated/air-conditioned apartment with total privacy (except for Koda), hot water waiting in case I want to take a shower, wash clothes, wash dishes.

I make my living, like millions of other people, doing work which doesn’t require leaving this place. Ever, unless I want to. I don’t have to drive to work, take the subway or a train, sit in conference rooms, put up with office politics or game-playing, none of it. I work on my terms, for who I want, doing work (writing) I really love. If I don’t like a client, for any reason or no reason, I can simply quit.

I can think of at least half-a-dozen times when because I was an idiot, I did things that could have gotten me instantly killed. For instance, when I was a boy, I had a thing for climbing water towers. A hundred feet in the air, no safety lines of any kind, screwing around on a platform the size of a kitchen table. If I had slipped or stumbled, my life would immediately have been over. Yet, here I am.

What have I done to deserve all this? Kind of nothing. Yes, I’ve worked very, very hard for many years, but so have a lot of people. A LOT of people. I’m not a lineman for the power company — I don’t risk getting killed doing this. I’m not a genius, who invented paper clips or liquid oxygen or the Foley catheter or anything like that. As I used to tell a former girlfriend, I’m just some guy. But I get to do and have all this stuff anyway. So do you, probably.

I got to spend yesterday with my three daughters. The fact that they’re all here and alive, and the childbirth didn’t kill their mother or them, is another miracle of technology. If you’re reading this and you’re a woman, here’s a scary fact: two of the girls are twins, and together, in utero, they weighed seventeen pounds. I’m kind of perversely proud of that fact, being male and all, but without anesthesia, c-sections, highly trained doctors and nurses, a hospital full of technology and labs and food and electricity and people staying up all night, and a whole pile of very carefully manufactured drugs, I assume delivering that much baby would be very, very dangerous. In their case, it wasn’t. And here they are.

And more incredibly, they’re amazing young women. Absolutely jaw-dropping. I’m sure every father on the planet feels this way, but all those other fathers are wrong. Their daughters do not hold a candle to mine. The Mitford sisters? Pathetic. The Brontes? Who cares?

The talking.

I sit at a table with them, and the conversation rackets around like light sabers in a Star Wars fight scene. One of them has already signed up to get a Ph.D. All of them have traveled the world — one has been to 25 countries, from Finland to India, and she’s in her twenties. One is a writer. One is absolutely fearless. They’re stylish, witty, energetic, kind (this is really important to me) and when necessary, tough.

What did I do to earn this? Nothing. I existed. I keep thinking of that line from Dune, where Duke Atreides, facing his own imminent death at the hands of Baron Harkonnen, murmurs as his final words, “Here I am. Here I remain.”

And even more incredibly, my daughters seem to like me, and care how I’m doing. I haven’t seen them in a few months, and during the day we spend together in Hancock I can tell each one is checking me out, determining if I’m doing okay. Two of them ask me directly, and actually listen to the answers. I am not, in other words, alone on this planet. I have a clan, I have a place in the clan, and that fact especially fills my heart.

I’ve been perversely fascinated over the last few days by a series of dumb YouTube videos of some simp being verbally abused by his wife. For reasons it’s probably not better to dwell upon, they do this adolescent thing where he says something really nasty, and she reacts by taking off a slipper and throwing it at him (she’s Chinese, so maybe this is a cultural thing), insulting him, threatening him, and belittling him. It’s kind of the horrible adult equivalent of parents who find their toddlers swearing adorable. And he’s immature enough to find this amusing, and to share it with the entire world.

What deeply misguided impulse would make someone live like this? And then put it on YouTube? Part of gratitude is thanking God after you hear the bullet whiz by your ear, and these videos do it for me. I don’t live like this, my daughters don’t behave like this, and I am fortunate enough to be able to exclude people who do this or any other awful thing from my life. Admittedly, I learned this the hard way, like everyone does, but I get to spend time with smart, funny, kind, thoughtful family members, and not the other kind. It’s absolutely horrifying how many people fall into the latter category.

I am grateful, then, for my ability to think about these things, to make changes, and to understand that in the end, I’m in control of my own life, destiny and future. An awful lot of people in this world don’t, or can’t, or won’t. As my boy Henry David Thoreau, the OG of the idea of the tiny house, put it, “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.”

And interestingly, gratitude like this actually creates a responsibility, or perhaps accountability. There’s a short story by Delmore Schwartz entitled In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. I always liked that concept, and I think gratitude powers it. If you’re surrounded by blessings, as most of us are, you do not, I think, have the freedom to complain (much) or sit on your butt. A lot of people worked very hard to make this wonderful life possible, and although if you just help yourself to it, nobody will know, it feels kind of unsavory. Instead, I believe you have an obligation to balance out the scales, to take all these gifts and do something with them.

As in so many other areas, Koda is a good example of this concept. I am privileged to own him. He’s a beautiful dog — good-natured, strong, loyal, devoted. In return for this, none of which I earned, I have a duty to take good care of him. Good food, lots of exercise, a certain amount of attention and socialization, clean water and a warm, dry, clean place to sleep. That seems like a fair deal to me, and fair matters. He’s happily snoozing on the carpet at my feet, so at least at the moment, I’ve kept my end of the bargain.

This doesn’t necessarily mean making the world a better place. I don’t believe that I even understand what a better world would look like, for one thing. You know, not so long ago everyone thought social media would promote democracy. Whoops.

But I do feel like we all do have an obligation, first of all, to consider our good fortune, and in particular, not take it for granted. Whatever else you do is kind of up to you, but you are obligated to note what’s occurred, to be a registrar of blessings, perhaps. Annie Lamott, who is the only white woman I’ve ever seen to successfully wear dreadlocks, wrote once that there are only three kinds of prayer —”Help”, “Thanks” and “Wow”. This is “Wow”.

Miss Lamott

And then, since it’s the last day of the year, I’m going to take a leap and also suggest that you consider why these blessings exist for you in the first place. Something caused them to happen, I believe. Something, or someone, is watching out for you. Note that every single one of the blessings I have listed only come to human beings. That’s interesting, isn’t it?

You don’t have to do this. Think of it as extra credit. Here are two quotes I think may help. The first one is from a poem by Max Ehrmann. It was on a poster in at least 25% of the dorm rooms when I was in college:

And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

And the second is a quote from Thomas Merton, which provides a partial, if very Christian, answer to the “Why do we get all this great stuff when all we’ve done is exist?” question:

“Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.”

Our job is to keep this in mind. That’s it. But it’s more than enough.

Happy New Year. The sun’s just coming up. I’m going to grab Koda, and go for a hike.