Posted by finelinebob on November 24, 2006, at 18:15:53
In reply to Re: So, what are YOU thankful for? » Declan, posted by Dinah on November 24, 2006, at 15:10:14
> Yet I still want to just curl up and go to sleep and never wake up. How grateful is that really?
And if someone lived to be 100 and honestly could say they were grateful for every single day, that would be 36,525 things for which to be grateful. If that person all the same wanted to sleep and not wake up, would that diminish the meaning of all those points of gratitude.
Our society has this perverse notion that you need to respond in kind whenever you are given a gift. A gift not given freely is not a gift, and gratitude felt with some encumbrance of a response in kind is not gratitude.
I'm grateful for my Beast. Maybe I can be that way because we've "come to an understanding" of sorts -- I have it on a leash, but it has me as well. But I know I would not be who I am today without it. Maybe without it I would have turned out to be as "good" or "better" than I am today; who knows?
I don't care, personally.
I don't trust my own opinion of myself, but counting the votes of those I care for in my life, I must be doing something right. Realizing that those who love me are perhaps a better mirror for me than the one on my bathroom wall? Yet another thing for which I am grateful.
poster:finelinebob
thread:706526
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20061123/msgs/706797.html