A Note to You: Consumed with Gratitude

I am consumed with gratitude, but I’m not entirely sure why. My parents weren’t particularly grateful, taking the position that they were giving up so much to be medical missionaries that God (sort of a mnemonic for monthly financial supporters) surely wouldn’t ask them to give up anything else, and in the scheme of things, we lived pretty well. Yeah, there was no electricity or running water, and we saved old JCPenney catalogs from our trips back to the US to stock the outhouse, but I have zero recollection of any resentment or sense of sacrifice. It was a glorious life with really wonderful people that I am still very attached to.

These people that I am attached to are the same people whose average monthly income (as an entire family, and they had big families) was $220 (in today’s dollars; $30 back then).

Will you allow me to digress with a human interest story about these people that still slays me? We live on a 61-acre hill (otherwise known as a non-working farm with remarkable views) in rural Tennessee. I mow the 30 acres that aren’t wooded (yesterday, in fact), and a crew of four swings by every week or two to mow the area around the house and trim everything up nicely. A few months ago, I was trying to communicate to one of the gentlemen, and they clearly weren’t understanding, so I switched to Spanish. No go in that language, either.

With some effort and some hand-signaling, I asked them what country they came from, and they said Guatemala (where I grew up). Wow. What a small world.

Still puzzled why they didn’t understand hardly any Spanish, I asked about which part of Guatemala. They said, “San Miguel Acatán” I almost lost my mind, as that’s the Mayan village I grew up in. So I switched to a very halting conversation in K’anjobal, the Mayan dialect that my parents helped them develop an alphabet for and produced the first literacy pamphlets, run off an old mimeograph machine my Dad found.

As the words first came out of my mouth, Antonio fell to his knees on the sidewalk in tears, and it wasn’t far to fall, as the average Mayan man’s height is around 5’, a full 4” taller than the average woman at 4’8”. He’d never heard a word of that language outside his family—much less from a white man. And if that wasn’t enough, the other three folks working with him are his brothers! All from the same village of 5,000 people!

And now I look forward to every one of their visits. Antonio over-waves at me at every pass of the mower, we sit and have ice cream together after they finish on the hotter days, they love telling jokes, most of which I don’t understand and are probably at my expense, and…

I don’t know why I’m telling you this story. Except that people who grew up in those circumstances, who tirelessly work their asses off, love live, and enjoy the little things surely have something to teach us about gratitude as we whine about nonsensical things from our airconditioned homes with running water and sewer and eleven subscriptions to streaming entertainment choices. Pausing to go on X or FB and correct people on the internet.

Also, I’m grateful for our wonderful, chaotic lives, for all the people with stories to tell, for the seemingly intractable challenges that we can all face together.

I’m drawn to a life well lived, with opportunity, curiosity, sacrifice, and a larger purpose. And I’ll be fine when that life ends.

I like my friends and I kind of like my enemies. I smile at people who think that, this time, the world really is ending and that I must do this and think that or I’m part of the problem. I smile at how clueless people are about the larger arc of history. You all know that America is just one of 195 countries, and a fairly young one, at that, right? We don’t have all the answers…and our gratitude for what we do have is sorely lacking. Kudos to those of you living elsewhere who have figured this out.

Most of all, to bring this back to why you might normally read this weekly missive, I love you people who keep trying to balance the short- and long-term, who try to make money for yourselves while also taking care of your people, who manage the push and pull of doing what clients want while also fighting for what they need. Most of all, I admire your courageous decisions, made out of gratitude for what you have, but without any deep fears about losing it.

This time of year in America is so very special: family visits (albeit a little bit broken at times for some of us), no expectation of gifts, the realization that we’ll probably eek out another year down here on earth, and being the supreme architects of our own businesses.  What a life, and so much to be grateful for.

We here at Punctuation thank you for letting us into your business lives, too. Truly.