The envelope I pulled from my mailbox was small and blue. My name and address were written in my father’s distinct block handwriting. Straight lines, all caps, no wasted strokes.
This wasn’t the first time I’d received this kind of envelope from him. Its size was too small to contain a substantial amount of information. It was just large enough to hold a short note and one other thing.
I held it in my hand and stared, feeling ripples of significance vibrating from it, like a steady orchestral note with no end. I couldn’t open it. The contents were too much for me. I put it down on the table and left it, unopened. I was too ashamed to acknowledge its contents, ashamed it was even in my possession. Here were my parents; loving, supportive, and still taking care of me as an adult, even from 800 miles away.
Good fortune has been ever-present in my life and has at times caused me to feel guilty. I frequently question the reasons I should be so fortunate. It messes with my sense of self. I wonder about the path my life would take without such fortune. I wonder if I would work harder or be where I am today.
But the emotional heat I was feeling subsequent to receiving this envelope was something less existential and more immediate. Frustrated I was in a position to receive such a letter I was also overcome with a feeling of immense gratitude. I had no way to express that gratitude except to say thank you. I was both moved by the gesture and incapacitated by it. My words were all I had and they felt paltry.
It is a uniquely disappointing moment to realize you cannot help yourself. At least not at the moment. And when somebody offers to help me, well, it vibrates within me like a tuning fork, loud, resonant, and unceasing.
People describe the feeling of needing help as humbling. To me that word has made the act of needing help feel noble; more a high-status request and less a gritty pawing for assistance. In my moments of greatest need, I would not say I felt humbled, I would describe it as a feeling of extreme vulnerability.
That vulnerability prompts within me a painful emotional fear I struggle to get past.
Those scenarios are when I have been fortunate enough to be lent a hand, or something far greater, so I may continue forward. That moment is strange and disorienting. The challenge is we don’t know what to do once we’ve been helped. We may feel our status has been lowered, our infallibility recognized, and most of all we may feel in debt. As though every gesture of kindness must be immediately repaid in spades.
It is almost alarming to observe an act of generosity by somebody who doesn’t need to perform it. Those who want to and can help others can be disarming when you are the target of their efforts. It is impossible to truly understand the motivations of another. We can only know why we ourselves have been compelled to act. Often times even we can’t verbalize why. We simply know we had to.
When on the receiving end of such kindness my first instinct is always to write a note to say thank you. Then I am immediately struck by the desire to buy the person some sort of a gift.
A windshield ice scraper. A book. A bottle of champagne. A gift card to a restaurant. These are all things I have purchased for friends at one time or another because they gave me something I couldn’t give myself.
In one instance it was a place to stay. In another, it was simply an evening to share my fears and aspirations. In every instance, the need to repay kindness was deeply seeded within me. I do not think it should become standard that acts of kindness be repaid with gifts, but I am moved to do so, to let the other person know I am not numb to their offering, to share with them I really am grateful. And yet, I still feel like my gratitude comes up short.
It is not for lack of practicing gratitude. Like many, I have a gratitude journal next to my bed. Every night before I sleep, I write down five things from the day I am grateful for. Sometimes it’s mint chocolate chip ice cream, many nights it’s the woman I am lucky enough to hold hands with every day. Frequently, it’s just “my life.” It feels as trite as it looks in writing. How one repays the universe for the life they are given is something I am not at all qualified to write about. That universal imbalance feels so similar to my efforts of gratitude toward others.
For those who like to hug, I will squeeze as tightly as I can for as long as I can. It feels stupid but gratitude can overwhelm me so much a physical manifestation is the only thing that makes sense. Hearts together, arms pulling tight, that is a gratitude I can convey strongly, accurately.
Even if I am able to express my gratitude in words and hugs, I still always come back to the need to repay a gesture in some monetary fashion. I am not sure why. My parents didn’t teach me to. I was never told I had to buy a gift to say thank you. My parents only made me say thank you, out loud, or in writing. They never guilted me or made me feel my thank yous weren’t enough. This feeling of indebtedness must be of my own creation.
We are taught to be grateful. We hear it. We say it. I wouldn’t venture to say many people are taught how to be grateful. The experience of gratitude; sitting with it, processing it, contextualizing it, those are things we do not learn. A deeper understanding of how to feel gratitude is something we as a culture are currently trying extremely hard to understand. I know I am… unsuccessfully.
It might be my tendency to get lost in the conceptual and the theoretical. I try to wrap my brain around experiences, real or potential, and end up in imagined conversations with no logical conclusion. These exercises leave me exhausted, perplexed, and sometimes detached from my sense of what anything means.
I do not recommend this exercise.
There is also nothing about repayment inherent in gratitude. I have friends who become visibly uncomfortable when people do favors for them. Something as simple as having a drink purchased for them prompts them to decline or demand they get the next one. I have never asked these friends why and perhaps I should. Maybe my confusion at their refusal is not so distant from my own guilt.
I think a large challenge of gratitude is it results from a one-sided transaction. It is unbalanced. We as humans crave closure, symmetry, and when we can get it, balance. To be on the receiving end of a gesture is to acknowledge, if not accept, an imbalance. That imbalance becomes more pronounced when it is acknowledged externally. When it isn’t something just felt or feared it becomes real.
And in those dire moments, when we are lacking, in need, or struggling, gestures that help us can feel almost unbearable. Kindness is received almost like pain. Something you can’t deny but also struggle to accept. Because to accept is to admit vulnerability. And admitting is hard. It means coming to terms with an often painful truth.
That blue envelope my father sent me sat on my living room table until my girlfriend got home from work. I told her what it was and how I didn’t want to open it because it meant admitting I needed what was inside. If I didn’t open it I could pretend my situation might instantly improve despite all evidence to the opposite.
Through tears and sobs, I told her about how lucky I was to have the parents I did and how ashamed I was I had let myself get to this position. I sobbed through my embarrassed. Being alone with that envelope meant I didn’t need to acknowledge these truths. I didn’t need to find the words as long as I didn’t have to speak them. Honesty is purging and exhausting.
Eventually, I opened the envelope. My father’s words, as supportive and to the point as ever, carried the weight of a granite engraving. As I read the note love and gratitude did their best to push shame aside. The good fortune I had reveled in when I was younger now felt overpaid.
It wasn’t the first time my parents had helped me and it wouldn’t be the last. Their generosity has been so significant I’m not sure my gratitude could ever repay them. They’ve told me they don’t need repayment and I believe them.
Though I still hope to in some way. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop trying.
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