Be grateful that we can choose how we respond

Lou Marzeles
News Editor

     It has been written that gratitude is an exclusive emotion; it cannot coexist with any negative thought. I know it's been written because I just wrote it.
     I'm grateful for humor, which is why I so readily employ it. The fact that it makes me and others laugh is an additional factor in choosing to use it. And I am quite certain that appreciation does not keep company with complaint or self-pity. If you put humor together with gratitude, you've got funny appreciation. Which is pretty much what I'm going for here.
     I've been contemplating the destruction of headstones at the cemetery by vandalism, and in particular what's going to keep it from happening again once the cemetery is restored to pristine beauty. I think for some the very existence of pristine beauty can evoke an act of retaliation, in frustration that such a thing can be found in the otherwise emotionally ugly world in which some people live. For such people, gratitude is a fairy tale for those who clearly live in some alternate reality where all is strangely well. For some, there seems too little to appreciate.
     But appreciation is a condition of the heart and mind, not a reflection on the appearance of given circumstances. In any reality, there is always something to appreciate. To say otherwise is to subscribe to the belief that happiness is something that either happens to us or not, controlled by those scrutable and possibly inattentive "powers that be." The mind that believes happiness simply befalls one or not is one enrolled in victimhood, with little capacity for proactive gratitude. Such a view is inherently fraught with uncertainty always attended by risk.
     To be sure, ours is an uncertain life. That's why it's kind of funny that the one, and only, thing we can truly control is how we respond to it. I think that's very worth being grateful for.