A week ago, I sat and wept in public. It was the kind of crying that comes when you feel like something bubbles over. The secret pool of you fills up until you spill, you leak, you overflow. It was that kind of crying. The kind it’s hard to stop.
To try and turn it into words was to see me shake my head, defeated. “What’s wrong?” my beloved asked, his voice soft, but I was too full of that dark water. To open my mouth was to risk a flood. All I could do was cry it out slowly, to be wheeled gently home again, allowed to sleep, wordless and unhappy.
Long ago, I discovered that the antidote to despair and fear isn’t hope — no, not that unsteady thing, heartbreaking in its fragility — it’s gratitude. It’s saying thank you thank you thank you over and over again, to everything and everything, until the world becomes bathed in light again.
To begin with, you may only whisper it like I did, tear-streaked, body spent. Thank you for this and this and this. This bed. This cup. This pillow. This buttery light coming through the window and spreading over me in thick, generous waves. This half a tree I can see, buds like boxing gloves swelling, swelling.
Every day, but especially when I can do very little else, I remind myself firmly: my only real ‘job’ in this life is to say thank you as many times as I can, in as many ways as I can. That’s it. Nothing else is required. All else that matters does and will grow from that. This is my foundation — life’s one true solid ground.
To say thank you to something is to take a moment to see its goodness; its innate generosity. Its goodness was already there of course, waiting for me to notice it, but because I am a human being, my default is often to live enveloped in a fog of mental noise, self-concern and confusion and to see very little else at all.
I must defy my programming and the programming of society that tells me that unless I guard and grimace and grit my teeth, things will only be taken from me, cruelly and unfairly, and that is all I should think about. Something out there wants me to be afraid because when I’m afraid, I’m powerless. I must remember to say the words — thank you, thank you — and then like a bonafide magic spell, the words change everything. Reality shifts, as profoundly as if I really were a sorceress.
Inherent in every thank you is the noticing of something new: “wait — you have given me something here, haven’t you?” In saying thank you, you suddenly know that it is true. This thing or this person has been sitting with a gift held out in open hands the whole time I’ve been looking at it.
The notebook has offered me its clean, fresh pages. The water has offered me renewal. The jumper I pull on has wrapped its arms around me as protectively as any imagined guardian. The crow, cawing from the tall tree has offered reassurance. Even the stuff that feels terrible in the moment, even that, holds some hidden gift somewhere — deep down, we all know that to be true. Thank you pain. Thank you disappointment. Thank you rejection. Perhaps you don’t know what you’ve been given, not precisely, perhaps you can’t see a gift at all, but say thank you and you feel yourself a little richer nonetheless.
Much is taken from us in this life, but once you start to say the spell, life stops feeling like a tug of war and instead you find yourself overwhelmed with gifts. Fear begins to seep away again. Tyrants, manipulators, despots; they all start to look ridiculous. They really think they can tip the scales? They really think they can convince us that their way is the only way when literally every other thing around us is heaping warm, rebellious generosity onto us with laughter, with no conditions at all? Here have this and this and this!
The antidote to despair and fear isn’t new joy but old joy rediscovered, the kind that you were born with, the kind that you’re made of and that never went away and can never be taken away, that just got lost in static. The kind that can emerge again like sunshine burning through cloud, honestly and inevitably, when you catch a glimpse of how profoundly the world is already holding you.
The antidote to despair is also silliness. It’s turning ‘thank you’ into a game, a song, a chant, a dance. It’s noticing when fear and hate arises and wagging your finger and saying, “na-ah, we’re not doing THAT!”, opening wide your arms instead to shout good morning and thank you to the starlings. Gratitude and this kind of big-hearted love was never meant to be serious — it was meant to be play.
I’ve spent the last few days saying nothing but thank you to everything I see — fierce and clowning. A week after that deep out-pouring of grief, despair and paralysing anxiety, I’m left feeling about as happy and peaceful as I ever have. My feet are strong on the ground again, roots snaking deeper and deeper, filling me with power.
I tell you, the people who roll their eyes at gratitude have never tried it, not really.
I tell you, this is how we win.
You’re reading a bimblings — my heartfelt offering to a generous universe. If you subscribe, you’ll receive one or two posts like this a month. They’re always free and written with love. Upgrading to a paid subscription is entirely voluntary but a vital source of support to help keep me writing and to protect my livelihood. Paid subscribers receive an extra post a month in which I share a little more of my life — this year I’m exploring some new ways to think. If subscribing isn’t for you, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee instead? It all helps me and my family enormously. Thank you so much for being here.
Beautiful Josie! You put into words my experience in a way I would struggle to. I adore your writing. I have severe CFS, and I have the same awareness of things, but not the writing skill to share it. You always make me feel so seen and heard. What a gift you have. I wonder if one day you would consider teaching writing to wannabes. I'd love to be your student if you ever do. Blessings upon your day beauty.
Gosh Josie. It takes a soul of both nobility and humility to run fingers through the dark water and to pull out the golden threads. I'm still learning. You are a great teacher. I am so grateful for you and your writing. X