2016 - Gratitude

Dear Friends and Family:

Welcome to the 10th Annual Kerns Thanksgiving Missive. For the past 9 years I have subjected my old work colleagues, family and friends to a missive about my personal reasons for being thankful, whether they wanted to hear it or not.  It is about why I am thankful for the opportunity to experience the love and friendship of the people who make up my life and to be able to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves to us every day.   

For those who are new to this tradition, welcome, and to those who are veterans I hope you’re not yet tired of receiving my annual message of “thanks” (if you are please let me know and I'll remove you from the list - I won't take it personally)……

As I sit and write this year’s missive in this present moment, my heart is full of gratitude. I am in the middle of Forsythe Park in Savannah, Georgia enjoying a weekend getaway with our best friends whom we love dearly.   It’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon in November. We all decided to relax before we venture on a three hour walking tour (called the “Tipsy History Tour”, of course), and I chose to spend this time in this beautiful park within this amazing, historic and breathtaking city. The sounds and sights of people living their lives surround me; a father kicking a soccer ball with is toddler son and daughter, there’s a family celebration of some kind in the distance, I hear the excitement of some twentysomething young men playing a pickup game of football, lovers embracing on a blanket basking in the noon day sun, joggers, walkers, bike riders all enjoying this glorious day. If this wasn’t enough there’s even a wonderful majestic statue honoring the civil war dead to add to the spirituality of this moment.

I had decided that this year’s missive would not just be about the things for which I am grateful, but also about gratitude itself. This is still my intention, but this beautiful present moment could not go without mention. I am so grateful for this present moments.

How do I define gratitude? Gratitude is very personal and it means different things to each of us. I was taught that gratitude was giving thanks for something positive that was done or said to us, or for something positive that we possess. I was taught to say “Thank you” almost from the moment I could speak. “Don’t forget please and thank you” was a sentence I heard many times growing up and have uttered many times as a parent. I was conditioned to say it, but I’m not sure I learned to feel it. It has taken all these years of my life, and I continue to learn, to finally appreciate and to be truly grateful for my life an all of its experiences and the people in my life.

Gratitude is awareness. Being aware of the good in my life. Being aware of the challenges that have occurred and how I have grown from those challenges. Being aware of the sights and sounds I observe sitting in this beautiful park on this glorious day at this present moment. Being aware of the challenges and the good, but also being aware of how they make me feel.

Gratitude is sharing. I can’t think of anything more joyous to me than when I can bring joy to someone else. When I am able to show that I am living with gratitude I see that it affects those around me. If you think about it, we all want to be around people with positive attitudes and it is uplifting to be that person. I always feel better when someone shows appreciation or someone is able to show a silver lining when challenges occur. Gratitude is sharing and its force is contagious.

Gratitude is a free. It costs nothing to be grateful. I just have to be willing to allow its positive force to occur.

Gratitude is healing. When I am experiencing a challenge or some distress I find a healing power in focusing on the positive things and wonderful people in my life now and in my past. In that moment that I am truly focused on the good, the bad disappears, even if only for a moment. Living a life with gratitude allows me to heal.

Gratitude is giving thanks for all of my experiences, the good and the bad. When I am faced with a challenge in my life I know that this is an opportunity for me to grow. When I am grateful, I am able to see the positive through the negative.

Gratitude is a choice. Like all of our emotions we have the power to choose gratitude over despair. I can choose an “attitude of gratitude”.

Gratitude is perspective. So many times I find myself anxious and distressed over the small annoyances and frustrations of everyday life. When I allow gratitude in, I realize the silliness of “sweating the small stuff”. I have, and will again, suffered major challenges and major losses. It is best that I focus my energy to heal from those larger events.

Finally, gratitude is a lifestyle. When we give thanks for something good that happens in our life we are being “thankful”. To be thankful for all that is part of our lives is living with gratitude.

For everything that gratitude is, we should be careful to understand what it is not!

Gratitude is not sacrifice. When you sacrifice something you are doing so for a purpose, usually to get something in return. Gratitude, on the other hand, is giving without expectation of receiving anything in return, (the ROI on gratitude is beyond measure, but measurement should not be the motivation).

Gratitude is not relief. For example; I am grateful for my good health. On the other hand, I am relieved I am not sick. It is a matter of focus. Gratitude is a lifestyle. Being relieved implies that something could go wrong. It’s based in fear, not gratitude.

Gratitude is not a switch that you can turn on. It is a learned trait over your entire lifetime. It is not instantaneous. There are very few people who live their lives with absolute gratitude every waking hour. They usually reside in a temple in some mountain somewhere. For me, I must consciously remind myself of the good in my present and my past.

Gratitude is not denial. Feeling gratitude for the good in our lives and finding a silver lining in the bad does not provide us an excuse to ignore challenges. Fear, pain, and distress are all part of the human experience and we must accept and process these emotions. We must pay close attention to the challenges in our lives and make a conscious effort to work through them. Only then will we find the elements for which to feel grateful. Gratitude is practice, never more so than when we are presented with challenges.

Speaking of challenges…..

I normally do not tackle politics in this missive, but I cannot omit our current challenge of the election of Donald Trump as the next POTUS.  I view this as a repudiation of what I consider the underlying goodness of people. It appears to be a celebration of hate, or at the very least the ignoring of hateful rhetoric for selfish priorities. I try to live my life without judgement no matter how hard that is to do at times, and I sometimes fail as most of us do. This was one of those times. I was very angry about the results. I wanted to blame someone, or a group, for allowing our country to select someone that appears not to represent every humanistic trait that I believe our country should represent. I wanted to blame the people of my demographic; white educated men, I wanted to blame the Director of the FBI, I wanted to blame Hilary Clinton for not running better campaign, and of course I wanted to blame Trump. I wanted to lash out at anyone who would dare to support such a person as Donald Trump, labeling them with hateful rhetoric. And then the “what ifs” came. What if there was a way to nullify the result? And then the despair that what I deemed impossible to happen actually happened, which finally was followed by the acceptance of what actually occurred.

I am distressed that so many people voted for a man that used hate as the cornerstone of his platform. I don’t believe that all of those who voted for Trump have hate in their hearts, but even to ignore the hate for selfish purposes is also distressing. I am distressed for all the people who will be negatively affected if he lives up to his campaign rhetoric. I am also distressed that so many people on the other side of the political spectrum have also resorted to insults and hateful rhetoric, including me, (albeit a different type of rhetoric). But maybe that is where gratitude is to begin.

There are so many who are distraught, not for themselves, but for those directly affected by the hate. I am thankful for those who hurt for the sake of others. There are those who will fight appropriately to try to restore our country to a place where humanistic values are more important than selfishness and hate. I am grateful for them. I strongly feel that my country and the values that I believe it stands for has taken a severe blow, but I am thankful for the millions of Americans who will endeavor to bring humanity and goodness back to the forefront of our national ideals.

And as always (but never taken for granted), I am thankful for Jeanmarie, my soulmate for 36 years who is distraught for all the disenfranchised who may suffer. I am thankful for my three amazing daughters; Katty, Maura and Erin, who since the election have each shown their humanity in their own unique ways. I am thankful for each of you who enrich, or have enriched, me with your presence in my life.

As always, while I am grateful for my past, it is the past and it can not be changed. The future can not be predicted, so I will do my best to focus on the present and try to live each moment with intention and gratitude.

Please have a wonderful, safe and happy Thanksgiving.

All the best
Tom (a/k/a TK, #papakerns, Kernsy, Hit Man, grandpa, the Professor and of course “tickles” – don’t ask)