Next week, most of us will carve a turkey, bow our heads and
give thanks. I must confess that for many years, this was a
ceremonial ritual for me; something that missed the true purpose
and meaning of giving thanks.
Next week, most of us will carve a turkey, bow our heads and give thanks. I must confess that for many years, this was a ceremonial ritual for me; something that missed the true purpose and meaning of giving thanks. I was certainly aware that I had a great deal to be thankful for, but I recited my list of blessings as though someone else had prepared it. You know the list – health, family and friends.
But as I bowed my head, my feelings of thanks were shallow if not fraudulent. Health, family and friends? Heck, I take that stuff for granted.
Beneath my superficial thankfulness was a longing for what I didn’t have. More than truly appreciating what I had, I felt a little cheated by what was missing.
Living, as we do, in an area of plenty, it is easy for one’s vision to be distorted in this way. We are surrounded by Beemers, Benzes and SUVs. It is natural to measure your world by the local yardstick and wonder why your house isn’t bigger, your kids aren’t smarter or your car isn’t slicker.
I have not traveled widely, but two years ago, I was lucky enough to travel to Nepal. It is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, but it is also one of the poorest. Kathmandu is not a westernized Asian city. There are few familiar reference points for a California boy who doesn’t get out much. Every turn of the head reveals something strange and exotic. Poverty and the finality of poverty are everywhere.
One particular memory from my visit sticks in my mind as emblematic of the life led by many people in this world that is hard for us to imagine. We were staying at the house of a Nepali friend. One evening, after the day’s activities in the city, I looked over the railing of my friend’s balcony and saw a confusing scene. Against a wall in the adjacent vacant lot, there was a large pile of crushed rock, the kind that might be used as a base for a road or concrete. Twenty feet away were two young men. With a shovel and a bucket, they were moving a very small pile of the same crushed rock, bucket by bucket, into the big pile. What were they doing? I couldn’t figure out why there would be that small pile sitting there so close to the big pile.
The next morning I got my answer. In addition to the usual morning sounds of dogs barking in the streets and the whining “putt-putt” of smoking two-cycle motor scooters, I heard a steady resonant “Crack … Crack … Crack.” I got up and looked over the railing, already knowing what I would see. The two men squatted on the ground by a pile of football-sized rocks, each with a hammer, breaking them stroke by stroke into gravel. Ten hours later, when I returned home, I watched them shovel their day’s work into buckets and combine it with the big pile by the wall.
This is not a summer job or a stepping-stone on the way up to something better. This job, or something like it, is all they will ever do. Ever since that day, I wonder what keeps those men going, what they look forward to. So much of what pushes us forward is hope – the expectation that we are working toward something better. What are these men’s hopes?
Now, when I review my gripes and longings, I am embarrassed. My problems would be their dreams come true. The poorest one of us is unimaginably wealthy to these men and to nearly everyone in Nepal. I have learned that everything in my life, even the “difficult,” are things for which I owe thanks.
