For Granted or With Gratitude

In her song Big Yellow Taxi Joni Mitchell sang, “You don't know what you've got till it's gone.” Since she is mostly singing about taking away trees and paving paradise, the song seems to be about the environment. But then she talks about her man leaving in a big yellow taxi, and you realize she is talking about how we take things and people for granted. We don't appreciate what we have until we lose it.

I have seen this as a nurse. When I was at a Shriner's hospital for children, I noticed that children who, say, lost a foot due to an accident had a much harder time dealing with it than children born without limbs. To the latter, their situation was normal; they learned to walk or get around with what they had. They zipped around in their wheelchairs and were cheerful. They had no sense of loss. Kids who lost a leg or a hand to accident or disease felt that loss profoundly.

People who are healthy often don't think about it and rarely express gratitude for their condition. Others who had a major injury or fought a serious illness in the past are usually very grateful for their current good health.

When it comes to wealth the situation seems even worse. Those who are rich seldom look at what they already have, realize it is much more than most people will ever have and express gratitude. They feel it is still not enough and want more.

The rise in gas and other prices does pinch but they are actually higher in other countries. But we, in the richest nation on earth, grumble. We don't know how much better we have it than some.

Thanksgiving is about gratitude. It is about not taking things and especially people for granted. During the last 3 years most of us have lost someone we know to Covid or some other disease. One day every one of us will no longer be on this earth. So it is imperative that we take the time to be grateful for what and whom we have in our lives now: family, friends, artists like Joni, inspirational figures, even your favorite hairdresser. We will not have them forever; we have them now. Be grateful.

And tell them. When my dad was dying, he asked what my brother and I were going to say about him at his funeral. So we wrote up our eulogies and gave them to him to read. I wish I had done the same for my mom. But I didn't know she was going to die until she got Covid. She was in a nursing home and neither my brother nor I was allowed in. And because she was profoundly hard of hearing, we couldn't call.

Why do we wait? Why do we not tell people how grateful we are for them now when they can hear it from our own lips?

So here's your assignment: find everyone who makes your life better, richer, more worthwhile and tell them. Call them; write them; put it on Facebook. But let them know.

And as for those who are gone, whom we did not tell how much they meant to us when they were alive: we can tell God. We can express our gratitude to him for putting them in our lives. And since he is the God whose very essence is love, and who is not limited by time and space, I'm sure he will somehow pass it on. Until the day we can tell them ourselves face to face.