After a long weekend with my family in Omaha, and safe travel back, and a winter snowstorm that's icing the streets and keeping my office quiet...I have more things to be grateful for than I was able to properly give thanks for on the assigned holiday.
Rather than generate a long list of people, places, things, and circumstances that I am so happy about, I'm thinking right now about how to be thankful. I still do the things I was taught when I was little--writing thank-you notes, saying "thank you," and such--but much of the time these things feel like empty gestures. Office work and frequent phone usage leave me saying "Thank you" probably a hundred times a day to people who don't really deserve my thanks. I don't really need to say "Thank you" to the person who calls to leave a message and gives me a phone number, but that's my usual conclusion to such a call. I bet the checker at King Soopers isn't really thankful I went through her line instead of someone else's. I'm sure the job candidates who meet with our deans don't really feel like writing thank-you notes for brief, hurried interviews full of platitudes and generalities, especially when they don't get offered a position. We do these things because we ought to, not because they're backed by feeling. It's not bad to do the things we ought to do, but it does mean the trappings of thanks sometimes seem to get in the way of actual gratitude. They are drained of meaning by the time I get around to people who really deserve my expressions of thankfulness.
My folks just welcomed me, my husband, and a sometimes-cranky two-year-old into their house for four days, fed us, drove uptown, downtown, and all around with us, and did their best to enjoy our company. My sister and her husband are splitting jobs and working crazy hours but they made time so we could hang out with my nephews and have a good visit. My super-patient husband drove most of the time for eight hours, each way, so I could spend time with my family. I feel like these people deserve more than the same words I'd give to a caller or to an interviewer or out of bored politeness. Yet I don't want to escalate to some superlative expressions of extreme gratitude. I'd like to reclaim "Thank you" for use in only those situations where genuine gratitude exists, but it may be too late to start.
I'd like to find the language to separate the "manners are the grease that keeps the social wheel turning" situations from the "I want to express strong feelings for all you've done/mean to me" situations. I don't mind giving thanks freely in situations where politeness is called for, but it would be really nice to have better words reserved for true thankfulness.
1 comment:
That brings to mind the fact that when the Bible was written there were something like 13 different words used that all translated to "love" in English, but all meant very different things. (I made up the number 13, but I know there were a lot). I agree that it would be nice to have different words to truly express the differences in the meanings of the "thank you" I close almost every work email with and the "thank you" I send to someone to whom I am truly grateful. I realize that each time I write a thank you note in which I wish to say so much more. The English language is sometimes, despite it's thousands of words, very limited.
Post a Comment