OPINION: 'I was given fifty lashes as a child but others had it worse'

Hemmingway wrote that the world breaks everyone and that's so very true.

It breaks us in as many ways as there are people to be broken. When the world seems harsh or cruel we can be shattered and embittered. We may feel like giving up or succumbing to the darker parts of our nature.

This week I find myself working in Waterford, on the road out to the hospital. Several times a day the wail of ambulance sirens cuts through the city noise like a scalpel, and I'm reminded that someone, somewhere, is having a worse day than I.

I’ve learned to be grateful for what I have and for what I can do. It wasn’t always like that though. I grew up in a violent maelstrom where from the age of three or four discipline was meted out in the form of horse whips, leather straps or at the worst with whatever came to hand.

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I’m not saying I didn’t merit punishment, I was a truly difficult child, a product of my environment, violent, secretive, and with a hatered for rules that bordered on delinquency and sometimes strayed over that line, but no one deserves fifty lashes for being a bold child and yet that number was not uncommon.

It took decades to reframe that torture. It began when a martial arts teacher told me to be grateful for the hardship because it made me strong. He didn’t know the myriad ways it had broken me first. I know now though, that so many others had it as bad or much worse and so I am grateful, not for the beatings, not for the hunger, not for the poverty, not for what came after, but for the ability to rise from it.

I’m grateful for the roof over my head when others have none, for hot meals when others starve, for the security of my front door and to live in a country that, with all it’s failings, is a good place to bring up children. I’m grateful for my health and for that of my loved ones and for my ability to go to work and provide for them. I’m grateful for the love I receive unsolicited and for the ability to show it to others too.

Am I grateful for the adversity or tragedy I have known and experienced? Not at all because all evidence to the contrary I’m not a masochist. So how do I find gratitude in those places? I’m grateful for the lessons, grateful for the strength to endure the hard times, grateful for the many times I fell and was helped by people who had no need to do so but did any way. I’m grateful for the myriad of second chances and free passes.

I’m grateful too if none of this pertains to you and you’ve led a blessed life, free of the adversities or pain that mark so many. I wish your life to continue on it’s way and pray that you have nothing but love and good days.

Gratitude isn’t necessarily the preserve of the downtrodden or the ones who have suffered and have dark experiences against which to measure their current circumstances. You don’t have to have struggled or overcome or fallen or known hard times or loss to be grateful. You can be grateful you had enough money in your account to purchase Oasis tickets and be ever more grateful you only paid face value when so many others were forced to pay double and triple that.

It’s realising that certain things we take for granted are actually wonderful positives. ‘There but for the grace of God go I’ is a mantra for gratitude and so is the simple realisation that even in hard times there are those who have it much worse. When we go through those times we can still be grateful that ‘This too shall pass’.

Living with grief in the aftermath of the loss of a loved one will never pass but I have learned to be so much more present and connected to those who are still in my life. I can’t give love to the ones who aren’t here but that means I can direct even more love to those who are and for that I am grateful.

So there it is. Gratitude is a state of mind that sharpens our awareness of the moment. It focuses our attention on a single event, thought or action and asks us to find a way to love that moment. It asks us to realise that anything we have is still more than nothing at all and to realise too that nothing is where we start from and inevitably where we end up.

In that gratitude teaches us the lesson that we can be grateful for life itself and that we don’t need much more to feel contented and at peace if we are grateful for all that we do have right now without being attached to having it. 

Wanting, coveting and needing are at odds with gratitude if they disturb our peace. If we are grateful for what we have and don’t need more, we find ourselves in a place of abundance. Anything that we receive after that is a bonus for which we can be grateful once more, and so abundance increases with gratitude, and that’s the secret sauce. The more you don’t need and are grateful for what you already have the more you will find that life gives you and adds to your lot.

The last thing I’m grateful for today is that I get to share this with you and if you take something from it I am beyond grateful because if I make one ounce of difference in this project I will have done more than I ever thought I could. I’m grateful that the paper took the chance on this column and that it has given me the opportunity to learn, to have fantastic conversations and to help on occasion. I wish you gratitude , peace and above all, love.