On Freedom and Gratitude
By Michael Drew - Dec 22 , 2011
For me, and for many of my acquaintances, 2010 was a start-over year. And this year has been one of rebuilding. At this point, I am not alone in feeling momentum as we head into 2012.
And trust me, we won’t have a global apocalypse. Can we put aside for good that Mayan Calendar gobbledygook and associated end-of-the-world fantasies? Thank you.
At the same time, 2012 does represent a new start for a lot of people (not a big end), and continuing ways of being heard and communicating.
We’ve been in a civic cycle for about a decade. This is a time when more people think outwardly rather than about themselves. But we’re about to enter a phase of this pendulum shift in our society when people begin to consider that their own collective mindset has more currency than that of another tribe. It’s an “I’m okay, you’re screwed up” way of thinking that places one set of beliefs over others.
During another civic cycle, in the Victorian era, Matthew Arnold published his greatest poem, Dover Beach, which closes with a plea for compromise, to feel a kinship despite one’s differences. It has a special relevance in our toxic political landscape when people place party over country and are loath to work together.
Here is the final stanza:
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night
This says much about the continuing, and losing, battle that we fight by defining ourselves solely by ideologies.
The thing is, we are blessed in this country, and although the world and culture and technology change rapidly, we should be grateful for our opportunities. We’re not in sub-Saharan Africa, plagued by drought and internecine warfare. We have not been ravaged by earthquakes. We have potable water. Certainly many of us don’t have the same levels of comfort we had only a few short years ago, but we still have so much more than most.
Last year, I spent the Christmas holidays – indeed, much of the year – stranded in Canada, unable to travel to the States to see my daughter because of immigration issues. Being stuck there, even among people I care about, gave me new perspective on what’s important.
Although I live in a free society, I did not have the freedom to travel as I had wanted. I couldn’t welcome the holidays with my daughter because that would have meant that I couldn’t return to Canada, where I’d begun a new life and a new business. I realized that what was important, truly important, was what I couldn’t have at that moment: the opportunity to share time with my child. I had taken for granted even the small freedoms.
If anything, my situation led me to confront my own beliefs. Forced to consider the perspective of my country from that of another, I learned (or tried to learn) how important it is to understand people with different perspectives and beliefs, and how essential it is that we all share gratitude for what we have – and for what we share with each other.
We live and work in a symbiotic ecosystem that depends on everyone working together. The changes that the near future holds will be profound, they may be scary, and we may not be comfortable with what’s happening, but it’s essential that we have a dialogue about what we see and how we feel. And that we be grateful for what we have.
We can’t have understanding without gratitude, and we can’t be grateful without humility. We are not alone in the world.
Let us be true to one another.
I’d love to hear from you. What fills your heart with gratitude? Have you had an experience that forced you to look at what’s important to you?
Best wishes for your Holiday Season,
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