There was a point when my favorite novelist, the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr., might have found it difficult to find a use for gratitude.
Vonnegut, a German American born to a family of architects and religious skeptics, saw his father’s business wither away during the Great Depression; as the family architecture business failed, so did the mental health of his mother. As he would often narrate things, she was quite used to being well-to-do before the crash of 1929, and would have severe difficulties adjusting to a life of financial ruin. Vonnegut’s mother, sadly, took her own life through a medication overdose.
His words on the subject: “She finally found life too embarrassing.”
In a way, you could say that Vonnegut always found life to be something of an embarrassing endeavor. What did Vonnegut mean by embarrassing?
He never defined this concept, specifically, at least as far as I can tell, but this is what I think he meant by the term: embarrassment refers to the emotional fallout from the terrible ways in which human beings behave.
Near the end of the Second World War, a young Vonnegut found himself as a POW, captured while scouting during the last gasp of the German army, the famed Battle of the Bulge. While captured, his train car was staffed by Allied forces (as the prisoner cars were not marked properly and according to the Geneva Conventions), resulting the deaths of many of his comrades.
As a prisoner, he was kept in a subterranean meat locker as protection from the bombing of Dresden. This air strike saw the relentless use of firebombing, and so much so that those on the surface either burned up or suffocated from lack of oxygen. The damage to the city, which was considered more of a moral than a military target, was so incalculable that its extent is debated to this day.
After the attack subsided, Vonnegut and his comrades were initially tasked with gathering bodies for mass graves. But there were too many bodies and not enough men. Graves were abandoned in flavor of flame-throwers.
If Vonnegut smelled anything for the rest of his life, I’m sure it was that. Perhaps this is another reason why chain-smoking was a favorite pastime of his. Maybe 40 Pall Malls a day is what it takes to forget the stench of a burning body.
When Vonnegut returned home to his family and his writing career, he had to do so against the backdrop of perhaps his greatest tragedy: the death of his sister Alice, his closest sibling. Alice had been suffering from aggressive cancer and was nearing the end. When she was told as much, her husband suffered a tragic fate when his train went over an open drawbridge. Alice died several days after hearing this news, and Vonnegut and his wife Jane were quick to adopt their children.
The fact that Vonnegut spent an entire career making people think and laugh is unsurprising. There was much trauma there, and enough death to spare.
How did Vonnegut respond to tragedy? Laughter is the response that is cited the most, and that’s probably not wrong. At the same time, I suspect that Vonnegut may have had another answer, as he told the following story over and over, both in and outside of his works. It goes like this:
“I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father's kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well- read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, ‘If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.’
SO I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘if this isn't nice, I don't know what is’”(A Man Without a Country, p. 132).
These are the words of a man who saw death at its most punishing state, and decided that the best posture in life was this:
Take notice of the small things. Really take notice of them. Hold them close, and keep them as reminders when the next Dresden gets turned to rubble.
In the type of therapy that I am in, I am told to basically stack up positive things and reflect on them routinely. I find nothing in this advice materially different from that of Mr. Vonnegut.
Life does not pause to be kind to us, so we must pause and be kind to ourselves.
And we can start with the little things. Recently, I’ve learned that much of my everyday happiness is tied to quick access to cold, flavored water. And it has to be ice cold water. The flavor is there, as well as a grounding sensory experience. I find it difficult to take a sip without thinking, “Vonnegut was right. This really is nice.”
And it is always nice to have that water. It is nice to have nice things to say.
I am not a bearer of good news. I write about things that are authentic, but also painful. I wouldn’t call most of this blog light reading for the family on a rainy day. The point of this rhetorical space is to put my life and pain on display so that others can understand this: borderlines are people, not monsters, and we deserve the chance to make our way with the rest of humanity.
Life is rough. Everyone reading this blog is going to feel pain and die. That’s the backdrop, and it isn’t pleasant one.
But who says we can’t be pleasant anyway? Yes. There is death. Yes, there is loss. Yes, there is sickness.
But there are also many moments, propped up by nothing more than the little things that we forget about. If we give up these little things, we give up everything.
Go do something today that makes you smile, even if you don’t feel like you deserve it. When you are done, march yourself in front of a mirror and say this in an authoritative voice:
If this isn’t nice, what is?
Yours Mentally,
Nathan
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