Mumbai & Putting Grit in Your Gratitude

As I sat down to write a blog post on gratitude a few days before the US Thanksgiving day holiday, I was troubled by a feeling of hesitation. I couldn't write a thing. I thought maybe the day had to unfold for the muse to strike. But the day came and went and I felt as dry in the inspiration department as a dry stick. What was up with me? I had plenty to feel grateful for! Why couldn't I write? I trust my intuition and something kept telling me to delay. Delay. Do not write. Do not write about gratitude. I felt sick to my stomach. Nauseous. Agitated. I ended up pushing through my resistance and writing something. I didn't like it. It felt forced. I took it down.

When I picked up The Guardian the next morning at my favorite Starbucks in Earl's Court, the anxiety and stomach churning of the last few days suddenly made sense. There it was in black and white - the Mumbai tragedy. I read the story backwards and forwards and then glued myself to the TV. If I'd had trouble writing about gratitude before this, it was impossible for me to write about it now. The events in Mumbai had taken the wind out of my sails.

I spent the entire next day on a kind of inner pause....in numb speechlessness. My brother's Indian nanny called home and spoke to many friends in Mumbai. A friend of mine in the United States told me about a friend of his who was a member of the group that lost the man from Virginia and his daughter.

When my little niece asked me what was wrong, I mumbled something about terrorists. My younger nephew looked at me and said, 'What is a tehwwowist?' I looked at his thoughtful, innocent face and paused. What could I say? He could see me struggling to find an appropriate answer. I thought of all the things I could say. But nothing I could say felt right. Everything I would have said would have been said from judgment and fear. And what would have been the good of adding more of that to the world? I couldn't muster an inspired answer. Within a few moments, my nephew was on to other things. But I was in search of an answer.

When I turned on CNN, I was mesmerized by two different interviews with hostages who had escaped. They said they wanted to return to Mumbai to let the people of Mumbai know they are loved and that they did not deserve this tragedy. It was an extraordinary expression of gratitude and appreciation at a time when anger, resentment, fear and outrage would have been entirely understandable.

Listening to these two men I realized that their gratitude had grit in it and love - the grit of having faced death and survived and love for life, their life, all life.

I realized if my nephew asked me now, I would have an answer for him. The terrorists I would tell him are just an extreme example of people who have forgotten that love and gratitude are the most powerful forces on earth. I would tell him there are days when I forget it too.