machado: are you faking peace, joy and love?
gratitude isn't always bliss, so if for you, this time of year brings with it a difficulty to feel anything good, the experts say it's ok. feel all your feels and know you're not alone.
7 minute read
many of us are raised being told that we should be thankful because others have it worse. getty
“sal, if you tell me one more time to count my blessings …” the man’s voice trailed off as he made a slicing motion on his neck with his hand. he was a bit more than 60, wearing a white dress shirt and a black leather trapper hat — the ones with the furry ear flaps. sal slapped him on the back as he laughed, pushing his chair away from the table.
“just tellin’ it like it is, man,” he said. “like it is.”
it looked as if they had just finished dinner, a couple of pizzas and four beers. sal pulled a bright green saskatchewan roughriders sweatshirt over his head. then he grabbed the handle of a small black suitcase with one hand, while emptying the foamy remnants of one of the beer glasses into his mouth with the other.
with a wave, he left the restaurant. the man at the table and i watched him through the window as he made his way across the snowy parking lot, his body bent forward against the wind. he turned, waved again and climbed into a cab.
i was sitting in the lounge of a hotel near toronto’s pearson airport waiting for a friend who was picking her daughter up after some time travelling the world. the two men had come in after me, settling in at a high-top table a little ways away. i heard them catching up — their kids (all good, except for the irritation with the one who quit university and lied about it), wives (one wanted a cat for christmas, the other a trip to spain) and work (both were playing the lottery, but dammit, neither had won more than $20).
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with his friend gone, the trapper hat man leaned back in his chair with a deep breath out, crossing his legs and folding his hands on a small, round belly. his thumbs were on top of each other. our eyes met and he smiled.
“that’s sal,” he said. “he always wants me to be happy.”
we chatted a little about how they had known each other since high school, that sal had lived in regina since university and how they had been meeting on the same day every december while he was visiting family in toronto for the holidays. the man explained that it had been a tough year for him, his wife had been sick, he had a car accident that had broken his leg and collarbone (“i still can’t walk without pain”) and his basement keeps flooding because he can’t afford to fix it.
feeling sad doesn’t equal an inability to see what’s good
a server brought him a hot tea — with two sugars — just as we were talking about the holidays. he put the tea bag into the mug, instead of the brown carafe of hot water. i said that i found this time of year sad, that it made me miss the people i have lost more than ever, and how i didn’t like the sneaky way the season had of making you feel that it’s wrong to be anything but over-the-moon joyous and grateful. it was like a milestone birthday — the kind that makes you take stock of things and lament how life isn’t the way you hoped — except it lasts for a month. and not that i wasn’t grateful, i said, mentioning all the wonderful things i have in my life that make me happy. it was just that, well, just because you feel one thing, doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t feel the other. feeling sad or lost or lonely does not equal the inability to see what’s good. it just is, i said.
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he said that sal got uncomfortable when he talked about feeling down. in fact, sal, who had started writing a list of all he was glad about every morning and taping it to the rear-view mirror in his work truck, was trying to convince his friend to do the same.
“now he wants me to do a list too, but it’s not my thing,” the man said. “i guess i have been complaining a lot the last few times we have texted.”
he went on to say that now, whenever sal asks how he is, he just says he is great so he can avoid the long lectures that usually come next, peppered with motivational phrases about looking on the bright side, keeping his chin up, and accepting that it could be worse.
“especially around the holidays, it can be a hard time” he said, sipping his tea, his finger holding the bag so it wouldn’t hit his lips. “certainly, one could be forgiven for feeling a little crappy, while still appreciating all of god’s good graces.”
but we don’t always forgive the crappiness.
gratitude isn’t an either/or deal
part of this is the high value that we place on gratitude. new york psychotherapist christy o’shoney writes in a blog post that we are often raised with gratitude being “mandated,” being told, for example, that we should be thankful because others have it worse. she also points out that it doesn’t help that there is a swath of research showing that being grateful takes the edge off of anxiety and depression. this, combined with what we are taught about gratitude, gets us into a place where we might feel bad or ashamed about feeling anything less than thankful.
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but o’shoney says that because gratitude is a feeling, which is neither good or bad, if you’re not feeling it, it’s ok. gratitude isn’t an either/or deal.
“rarely do we ever feel just one thing, and that’s ok,” she says. “our inner lives are complex enough to hold multiple truths at once. that means we are allowed to feel both gratitude and sadness, gratitude and anger, gratitude and grief, etc.”
she also cautions against the urge to suppress feelings that run counter to gratitude, like anger or sadness, because by doing so, you miss important messages your brain is sending. allowing yourself to feel sadness, for example, helps you to know when you need to reach out for help, while ignoring sadness in favour of forced gratitude, makes it difficult to take care of yourself.
for sure, how we got to a place that — during a time that’s supposed to be all about peace, joy and love — some of us feel the need to fake it is a whole other story. but j, who wrote to me last week about his daughter needing a special treatment that’s not available where he lives, and m, who just celebrated five years cancer-free, yet lives every day in fear of a relapse and b, who lost both her parents to covid a few months ago, and yup, even trapper hat guy with his sick wife and constant pain, you all already know that gratitude doesn’t have to be — and isn’t — bliss. rather, it’s a messy feeling that constantly weaves in and out of all of the other emotions that we carry, including the yucky ones like sadness, anger and disappointment.
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so if for you, this time of year brings with it a difficulty to feel anything good, the experts say it’s ok. feel all your feels and know you’re not alone.
by the time my friend had flopped down across from me, exhausted from navigating the busy parking lot, the man had left, leaving me with the wish that next year we’d both be feeling gloomy-happy on a beach somewhere.
“don’t forget to count your blessings,” he had said before he walked out, chuckling into a balled fist.
i never got his name — i imagined he was a frank or a paul — but he reminded me of myself, and my neighbours and my friends and you, our readers, who reach out to share their own stories of what weighs on them. we all have worries that take up emotional space along with gratitude. and maybe for you, the holidays make that space feel a little bit tight. hopefully, there’s a place for you with people who allow room for both.
as another challenging year comes to an end, from all of us here at healthing, thanks for reading, thanks for trusting us with your incredible stories and thanks for your support. season’s greetings to you and those you care about. we wish you a safe and healthy holiday and a wonderful 2023. and as always, drop us a line if you feel like it at info@healthing.ca.
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lisa machado is the executive producer of healthing.ca. follow her @iamlisamachado.
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