“My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.” --Michael J. Fox, actor and activist, with Parkinson’s disease
A sixteen pound turkey, hot out of the oven. A house filled with overnight holiday guests, friends and family gathered for a multi-day celebration. Watching my favorite Thanksgiving movie, “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”, with my Godson, and laughing at the same goofy jokes every year. Twelve sets of hands connected around the table, each of us saying what we were most thankful for on that fourth Thursday of November.
That is not what happened last week at my home, not even close.
Instead almost every single cherished holiday tradition I was so ready to mark and carry out in 2020—none occurred. All the typical hopes I usually have for my favorite holiday of the year? None came true, not even one. The rituals I was so used to: these could not be practiced either, not in these strange days.
Instead, I cooked a big steak on the grill, and baked a potato and steamed some asparagus, for my Turkey day meal, and then watched solo, a favorite movie. I hung out with loved ones, not in person, but over Zoom. I made my first ever pumpkin pie, with a crust from scratch, because there was no one else to bake. I spent two hours with friends in my COVID pod, in person, for pie and football, but not for too long, to keep it safe. I spoke by phone with all of the folks I’d have usually given a big hug too.
And it was still a great Thanksgiving, one I will never, ever forget, that’s for sure.
But in order for me to experience that day in a brand new way, to be open to the surprises and gifts that life sent my way, I had to let go of something I often hang on to so tightly, for dear life even. My expectations: what I believed that day should have been like. My expectations of how everything was supposed to unfold. My stubborn insistence that this day had to be just like all of my other Thanksgivings in years past.
Here’s the miracle.
When I let go, life unfolded before me in ways I could never have predicted and for that, I am truly thankful. When I decided to jettison expectations, my heart opened and my mind opened. I was ready to experience this sometimes weird and unpredictable life in wholly new ways. That was my best holiday gift so in 2020, by far. Good spiritual practice, too, for year-end holy days and holidays, less than a month away. Good spiritual outlook to embrace for the rest of life too.
To expect less. To temper expectations. To accept life more. To be ready and even excited about just what might happen, but only if we are willing to give up our need to control circumstances that are finally beyond our control. Like a pandemic.
The first time I was introduced to this discipline of letting go was through one of the best loved prayers in the world, “The Serenity Prayer”, written by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and first publicly prayed in 1943, at a church in the small town of Heath, Massachusetts. It’s since been adopted by millions of people, especially folks in recovery from addiction, but its philosophy holds true for all of life.
He wrote, “God, grant me the serenity, to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” That’s the line many of us already know by heart, wise advice, absolutely. But it’s a line in the original long version of the prayer that really challenges me to examine everything I expect in life, even demand, sometimes.
“Living one day at a time. Enjoying one moment at a time….Taking this…world as it is, and not as I would have it, that I may be reasonably happy in this life….”
Reasonably happy!
When I approach life, with all of its unpredictability and all of its pain and all of its joy, with that one hope—reasonable happiness--life rarely disappoints me. For every day, even in the struggles, as with COVID, we can always find something beautiful, some grace, some blessing, some relationship, to be grateful for. And some expectation to let go of.
So, this December, in 2020 and beyond…may God, may whatever higher power holds the universe together: may this spirit grant us wisdom, grant us acceptance and grant us courage, for the living of these remarkable days.
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