Giving Thanks

Objectively speaking, I have perhaps more to be thankful for this year than ever before. Two years ago I wasn’t sure if I could reasonably expect to find a job that would support living independently, or what career direction I would even enjoy. Last year I found such a job, but was plagued by all the attendant new-job anxieties and uncertainties. Now I am firmly ensconced in a very comfortable job surrounded by lovely people and with interesting career potentialities. I have made more sustained progress than ever before at maturing my behavior in many areas (though not all), and in sublimating my anxieties. My life is more organized than before, and I’m a year and a half into enjoying the beautiful icebox that is Alaska. I even consistently find time to read more than I have since grad school, without any such compulsion.

Yet gratitude remains challenging. I continue to encounter pressing anxieties more frequently than one strikes rocks on the road from Chitina to McCarthy. And for anything that I successfully do, I am reminded of my fear of missing out on everything else, or disappointed in the manner or pace at which I succeeded. It feels hard to be thankful when one is filled with temporal insecurity and existential anxiety about the longest-term future, and when one feels that the scope of desire can never be met.

I know the answer for the Christian is to have anticipatory gratitude, grounded in what has already been achieved but not yet realized. I struggle to trust that these promises will apply to me, because I struggle to trust that I will ultimately accept and find satisfying what is promised. For now, I continue to proceed in the daily habit of thanksgiving, even if it usually seems tossed-off or perfunctory, in the hopeful faith that just as I could not have anticipated the improvements in my situation from two years ago, my inability to comprehend an all-satisfying and certain End is a limitation of my own vision and not of God. Today, I am actually quite thankful.