Greetings from 35,000 feet.
I’m writing to you from seat 50D, near the rear of a gargantuan Boeing 787, while cruising almost 7 miles above the Pacific Ocean. Destination: Japan. I’ve got over 4 hours left in this nearly 14-hour flight—more than enough time to use this week’s newsletter to reflect on gratitude.
Although Thanksgiving in America is already a week behind us, I didn’t have much time during the holiday to write, let alone reflect, on the spirit of thankfulness. My parents house was full to the brim with family—including my two small nephews (age 3 and 5), who showed me what it was like to be that young again and full of boundless energy. It was a wonderful time full of love and many reminders of how much I have to be thankful for.
Of course, it’s easy to feel grateful for my blessings when they are gathered before my eyes. It gets harder when I’m distant from such clear and present reminders. It’s harder still to feel grateful in times of turbulence—like the turbulence I’m feeling now as I write this. However, this is precisely when it’s most important to be grateful.
I’ve needed to practice gratitude this year, as it's been a turbulent time, indeed.
Internal and external challenges have lined up to make 2022 one of the most arduous and difficult years I’ve had in a while. But it’s precisely because of that I can say 2022 is also a year full of gratitude.
Over the last few years I’ve invested considerable effort into myself so that I can stand here and say: “I am grateful for my struggles.” I am stronger, more at peace, and better prepared for difficulty than I’ve been at any other time in my life.
What has made this possible is learning to lean into acceptance.
The American Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein says: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” Whether one suffers comes down to the choice between aversion and acceptance. That choice appears in the space between our experience of pain and our reaction to it. It’s natural to feel aversion to pain. However, when we become averse to the aversion to pain, that’s when suffering occurs.
In The Great Work of Your Life, author Stephen Cope calls this “aversion to the aversion”. He uses an example of his mother’s reaction to his father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis to illustrate the point. When his father became ill, his mother was determined to handle the experience by going on as if nothing was wrong. This included allowing his father to continue driving–even after his mental faculties had worsened to the point he was a danger to himself and others.
She was so averse to feeling the pain of her circumstances chose to avoid the reality of watching her life partner deteriorate and die before her eyes. That is called suffering. The only way to prevent this happening to us is to choose acceptance instead.
Acceptance means going into our anger, our fear. We have to feel it in our body and bones. We must get to know its energy and its heart. And there, resting within like a glowing ember at the center of a fire, lies a surprise–a gift. The gift, which is one of many such gifts, is the ability to face our struggles and turn them to our advantage.
In 2022, I faced failure and defeat. I faced uncertainty and fear. I faced life and death. I rose, I fell, and I rose again. I have tried to accept the pain I have felt so that I might learn from it. I have tried to look into the shadows of these experiences to find their gifts. I think I have done well.
Of course, tea is always my companion in my quest to find the gift.
As guests in the tea room, the first thing we do when we receive tea from the host is raise our bowl in gratitude. This is called kansha (感謝, “give thanks”) and it’s an important first step in accepting our bowl of tea. When we give thanks at this brief moment, we show gratitude to our host, to the gods, to the tea, and so on. Only then are we ready to take our first sip. I firmly believe the tea tastes better because we first pause and recognize the blessing of a warm bowl of tea.
Life should be the same. Perhaps everything we experience, no matter what it is, could be made richer if we pause for a moment and thank life for the opportunity it’s given us. If it sounds difficult, that’s because it is.
That’s why, when it gets hard to feel grateful, I stop to put on the kettle and have a cup of tea. No matter what’s going on, tea helps me pause and find a moment to raise my tea cup in two hands and say: “Thank you.”
I wish the same for each and every one of you.
Until next time, happy drinking.
Amazing work putting these feels into written words 7 miles above the earth!