5. The Tiger

Happy Tuesday!

In the spirit of Thanksgiving I thought I would write you all a letter filled with platitudes about gratitude and tips for how to feel more grateful despite all of your modern comforts and privileges. A gift from an enlightened blogger to you ungrateful epicureans.

Just kidding :)

Seriously though, it's hard to talk about gratitude without risking sounding patronizing, disingenuous, or preachy.

We all know how much there is to be grateful for but at the same time our lives are still complicated and hard. We still want things to be better.

Because we have challenges and desires, when someone comes along and tells us to feel more grateful, it's easy to react with a mix of guilt, shame, and irritation.

There is a Zen parable that goes:

One day, while walking through the wilderness, a woman encountered a hungry tiger. She fled but the tiger chased her until she reached the edge of a high cliff.

Desperate, she climbed down a thin vine hanging over the edge of the precipice. As she held on for her life, with the tiger clawing at her from above, two mice appeared from a hole in the cliff and started gnawing at the vine.

Suddenly, the woman noticed a plump wild strawberry growing out of a bush, also on the side of the cliff. She plucked the fruit and popped it in her mouth.

It was sweet and delicious!

That's it. That's the end of the parable.

You could interpret the meaning as, "Live in the moment!" or "Be grateful for the little things!"

But a more honest reaction might be something like, "Yea that strawberry is nice and all but it would be really great if those mice stopped gnawing at the vine. Did you notice the hungry tiger?"

Our problems are real. We certainly act as if they are and they cause us real stress and emotional pain.

We have health challenges, financial hardships, relationship troubles, doubts, fears, and regrets. We stress about existential problems and fuss over daily minutiae, all at the same time.

So how do we think about gratitude in the context of our daily lives? Our daily lives which full of hardships, problems, and desires.

I might be a lot happier if I could let go of all the things that I think I need to have, that I think I need to achieve, that I think I need to do.

I also know that for a lot of people around the world the quality of life that I enjoy and the opportunities available to me are either inaccessible or unimaginable.

But at the same time, I experience a lot of real emotional distress because of the challenges in my own life and because of things I want but don't have.

So I end up stuck somewhere in the middle.

Part of me is trying hard to feel grateful for all my blessings while letting go of my desires. The other part of me is asking, "Is it wrong to want things to be better? To want more?"

I think the answer must be that it is ok to want to more. Actually, it is a good thing to strive for a better life no matter your starting point. The distress that comes from unmet desire and from difficulty is part of being human.

All there is to do is meet that distress with acts of gratitude.

Trying to feel gratitude all the time is impractical. Just like surrendering all desire and accepting all hardship is almost impossible. So why do we think we should?

Instead of agonizing over our daily failure to recognize our blessings and feel better about our situation we're probably better off just doing things that express gratitude.

We're better off calling up an old friend or mentor and telling them we appreciate them. We're better off giving our time or our wealth to those who have less. We're better off bringing our loved ones together for a meal, simply to be together.

Gratitude is best as an act of creation, instead of a feeling.

I like the parable of the tiger and the strawberry because it doesn't try to deny the tiger, or the mice, or the cliff. We all know exactly how the story ends.

But despite the tragedy of her situation, the woman is still able to find a way to make the best of what is available to her.

So to borrow some of the wisdom of the Zen buddhists I propose we worry less about how're supposed to feel in the face of life's challenges and go forward with acts of gratitude nonetheless.

Cheers,

Nick

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