“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”
—Ernest Hemingway
By the time this post finds its way onto the interwebs, the Thanksgiving holiday will be less than twenty-four hours away. I’ve already been to the local grocery store to pick up the sacred seasonal fowl that we ordered several days ago, and the cooking and other prep will be getting into high gear by this afternoon and continuing into tomorrow morning – not just in our house but in millions of other houses from sea to shining sea.
So, yeah. About this business of giving thanks.
People who claim to be experts on how to make your life happy and fulfilling often refer to practicing gratitude as an important step in the process. Even if “practicing gratitude” sounds like a lofty phrase you might read on a motivational poster in a corporate CEO’s corner office, I believe it to be a worthwhile reminder – not just at Thanksgiving but every day, all year long.
The list of things for which I’m grateful is long, but the highlights look something like this:
I get out of bed every day. Yeah, certain body parts hurt when I do it, but the fact is, I keep waking up. I get another chance every time the sun circles around and comes back up. And the first cup of coffee is just a few minutes away because I had the foresight to prepare it the night before.
I have a wife who does an excellent job of helping me stay on the straight and narrow and at the same time gives me room to do the things I want to do and enjoy the things I want to enjoy without judgment or reprimand. Since the day I met her twenty-eight years ago, whenever I’ve said, “I’d like to try X,” she has never once said, “I think X is a bad idea.”
I have two amazing kids. One graduated from college less than two years ago, and the other is formulating a plan as he gets ready to graduate from college next spring. I worry about them as they take their first tentative steps – because worrying about them became part of my job description when we brought them home from the hospital more than twenty years ago – but I know they’ll make good choices and find their way.
I have a job at a large company in Northeast Ohio that’s been around for more than a century and isn’t going anywhere. I’ve been there for nearly a dozen years, and it enables me to take care of the business of being a grownup. There was a stretch during the Great Recession – two years that felt like twenty – when I was not so fortunate. It was a dark time, but out of respect and compassion for others who struggle or have struggled with unemployment, it’s a time that I refuse to forget.
We have a roof over our heads. It sits on top of a house that we own. Okay, just to be perfectly clear, the bank still owns a sizable portion of the house, but the previously mentioned job enables me to make consistent monthly payments on the mortgage. In the basement of that house is a fully functioning furnace that gets us through the cold months. It’s not even two years old, because we had the financial resources to replace the one that had been chugging away down there for nearly thirty years.
Our refrigerator is almost always full. And on those occasions when it’s not, it’s only because we lack the time to go out and buy groceries. It’s never because we lack the money.
At a time in life when most people’s circle of friends tends to shrink, mine is still fairly wide. And it covers a broad geographical territory. There are many whom I see only once or twice a year, but I still value their presence in that circle.
This next one is a little tricky, because it’s completely intangible and kind of mysterious. Somewhere early on, I discovered that I had a small reserve of certain creative abilities. Nothing close to genius, but more like a bag of tricks that was maybe a little bigger than most. A capacity to weave language and ideas together in ways that are sometimes informative, sometimes entertaining, sometimes compelling, and sometimes a combination of some or all of these things. Don’t ask me exactly where it came from. That would be the start of a long conversation that has no definitive answer. Whoever or whatever the source, I’m grateful for the gift and I work hard every day – literally every single day – to make the best of it.
And then there’s the even greater mystery: There are the people who actually read my books and stories. I have no idea what the numbers are, but there are readers out there – some of whom I don’t even know – who are waiting for my next book, short story, article, essay or whatever’s coming next from the word pipeline. I’m sure they’re a relatively small group, but they keep showing up. If you’re reading these words, it’s possible that you’re one of them. I’m grateful to have you here.
There’s more. There’s a lot more. I could continue the list from now until next Thanksgiving and only scratch the surface.
My father used to say, “Do the best you can with what you have.” It seemed like an overly simplistic piece of advice when I was much younger, but more recently – nearly fourteen years after his passing – I’ve come to see the wisdom of it. He probably wasn’t thinking of Hemingway when he said it, but it sounds a bit like what Hemingway was trying to say: Don’t waste time lamenting what you can’t do because of what you don’t have. Recognize what you do have and use it to its fullest potential.
I do my best every day to think of what I can do with what there is. And I’m grateful because there is plenty.
Happy Thanksgiving.