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by Arnold De Villa
December 3, 2010
“Thank you, thank you very much for everything!” I think this greeting is more appropriate than the age old salutation of “Happy Thanksgiving Day!” While the former tries to reach out, the latter merely expresses a warm wish. I am sorry for being late. I hope you had the best get together and the best moments of expressing a collective gratitude.
Gracias! Viele Danke! Salamat! Merci beaucoup! Mille Grazie! Sye Sye! Mabalos! So many tongues, so many forms of expression, and many nuances of cultural undertones, summed up in one common but profound word – Grace. Thanksgiving before and after a meal is “saying grace”. Gratitude without the meal, I believe, is still expressing grace. Yet, besides the context of prayer, and beyond Christian concepts, “grace” does not possess a universal trait that could embark beyond the barriers of religion. So I make one up.
I think that “grace” is gratitude, an honest act of acknowledging the existence of blessings, the abundance of good things, and the presence of goodness. Being thankful and being grateful is one of the same kind. At the very least, it is man’s exclusive ability to realize that all resources come from a Source. And at its most, it is the awareness that despite our scarcity and imperfections, there is always a solution to any deficiency we fondly label as problems. This is perhaps a challenge for any atheist to accept. Since the denial of God’s existence comprises their basic tenet, they will have to deny the fact that God is the ultimate source of everything. If that source does not exist, then who do they have to thank? Then they have to thank the “what”, attributing the amorphous concept of “nature” as the source of thanksgiving. Or maybe, they do not have the need to thank anyone or anything at all. But how would life be if we do not recognize the source of life? What courage could we have to wish for things without first being grateful for what we have already received?
We normally commence our Thanksgiving prayer asking the Lord to bless us, for the gifts we had and for other gifts to come. It is through His goodness that we taste abundance. Sadly, it is because of our imperfect sense of appreciation that we block this abundance from flowing. So the prayer concludes with the indispensable inclusion of Christ, the anointed conduit between the Giver and the receiver. In this big party of human opposites, we needed a Third Party to open the gates of communication so that our act of Thanksgiving could truly make sense – Jesus Christ. Sorry, but I can only speak from a Christian’s perspective. The truth is, sincere thanksgiving is beyond words and transcends tradition. You will know it when you feel it.
I remember my dad slumping on his favorite couch with a newspaper in his hand, sighing after a long day’s work, and then releasing his daily phrase of “Salamat sa Dios” (thanks be to God). He repeated this incantation so many times that he could have been the inventor of the “Theology of Gratitude”. Too bad he never formulated any doctrine or wrote any compendium. Yet he was consistent in his simple preaching that we should always be thankful. He was not very concrete on the how or the why, but we got the message and it helped us survive life’s challenges.
My father was right after all. “Be thankful at all times”, he said. “Gratitude is not the shallow recourse of the mediocre who wallows in what is less. It is the portal of a humble soul that ferries him to the greatness of God’s plans. For it is only he who sees and acknowledges the Source who can have the right and who can truly ask for more. And it is only he who accepts the fact that his needs can be provided for. “Be thankful before you ask. For when you are thankful, you have already received”, my father taught us.
I miss thanksgiving, I mean, the deeper sense of thanksgiving we have back home. We did not have an annual “Black Friday” or a bacchanalia of disguised cholesterol and sugar additives; a sumptuous banquet of food was not that available. With five siblings, I recall that fried chicken and spaghetti with meat balls and hot dogs were enough reason to celebrate. Powdered orange juice was the normal beverage. Never did we have champagne or carbonated grape juice to supplement the festivity. Apples, oranges, grapes and chestnuts were luxury for us. Yet, I cannot explain the exquisite joy our family used to have, gathered as kids in the simple cramped corner of an apartment we called home, when my parents were just starting. Back then, a bag of fresh warm roasted peanuts and “hopia” kept as awake until Dad arrived from work. Now, with my own son suffering from a modern day’s malady of gluten sensitivity, we cannot enjoy even the most complicated and expensive French pastry available.
It is ironical to realize that the best memories I have of Thanksgiving are moments spent in a place that does not celebrate “Thanksgiving Day”. Can I say that we are more grateful than Americans because we value what is simple? No, not necessarily. The other aspect of thanksgiving is not just the appreciation of what we have but also the good stewardship of what is available. The Philippines is listed somewhere as a country whose natural resources are about to be depleted. Whatever that listing is, it is actually unnecessary. The facts decry the truth that our mountains are eroding, our rivers are running dry, while our mines are being exploited and our human resources being brutally exported for the sake of cash. Nonetheless, this aspect of gratitude extends beyond the inner disposition of an individual and embarks on the socio-political structures of an entire nation. It will be good for another article.
I apologize for missing you last week. Thank you for being there, for all your nice remarks, for even sending me a clip of my own article with a hand written comment that you like it. Right after this is published, it gets posted on my Facebook site in the same way that the online version of MegaScene is also published. Although the internet has a wider scope of a possible audience, Facebook has a tighter profile of faithful readers. And for that, I need to thank all my friends on Facebook as well who almost always consistently read what I write, and some, no matter what I write. Many of them are not on par with the true definition of “friends” because I have never met them, but the thoughts shared and discussed through prose and poetry have magic and enchantment.
If thinking is a basic human need, then being grateful should be an essential human behavior. Thank you one more time!