Thankful in a Difficult Year

Being circumspect and choosing your response meets knowing what you want.

Sometimes you find yourself asking when all the awful will stop, right? It gets to feeling like everything is just going wrong, and there’s no sign of anything getting better anytime soon.

At times like this, you feel tempted to just throw your hands up and give up.

But stop to consider that maybe it’s time to look harder. To consciously and actively seek the good that is still all around you. To focus on that goodness and remind yourself that life is always a balance.

No, That’s Not Easy

It’s likely you’re thinking that what I’m suggesting isn’t so easy, and you’re right. It’s not. The bad stuff piles up and it gets to feel like it weighs a ton, or a few tons. How will you ever find your way out from under all that?

I can only use my own example to illustrate what I think is possible if you can just focus on changing your response to what’s confronting you.

My Year

2024 has clearly been one of the most awful, challenging years of my life, and at my age that’s saying something.

The year began with the loss of my beautiful, wonderful daughter-in-law. She was the most supportive and loving wife to my son, the most phenomenal mother to my grandson, and a a daughter to my wife and I. She was also a valiant warrior who fought her cancer for six long, difficult years and finally succumbed to it. We were and are all devastated.

She used to wrap her arms around me and tell me how much she loved my “Howie Hugs.” I cannot describe how very much I miss her and the gaping hole we all feel in our lives without her here. Her enormous community of friends are both a comfort to us and a reminder of just how powerful her love was.

A few months later I contracted a cellulitis infection in my leg and had to spend a week in the hospital getting IV anti-biotics.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, I was going to visit my doctor for a check-up on that leg when I became dizzy, fell forward onto sliding doors which then slid open pulling and twisting my arms behind me. The result was spiral fractures of the humerus bones in both my arms.

Once again, I found myself in the hospital after a horrifying ambulance adventure. Titanium posts were surgically inserted in both arms, and I began what is continuing to be a long journey toward rehabilitation with physical therapy. My doctors anticipate me regaining relatively full range of motion within a year or so.

Which brings us to November.

Having grown up in Queens, NY I have always been all too aware of the awful excuse for a human being that our country has just elected to be our President once again. Watching the circus of his ascent to an office which he is wholly unqualified to hold strikes cold fear into me. What kind of world will we be leaving my grandsons? How many more of our neighbors will have to suffer and die with him back in the Oval Office?

To say I am devastated by the horrific failure of our nation to recognize how ridiculous it is to elect someone who attempted to overthrow our government, who molests and defames women, who defrauds most everyone he does business with, and who just talks trash constantly about everyone is pure understatement. I can no longer understand what is wrong with us, or how our country will survive what is wrong with us. I keep waiting to wake up from this nightmare.

But then, the day after the saddest election of all time, my mentor of 50 years passed away at age 91. One of my college professors, we have remained in constant contact sharing our thinking, our observations, our concerns, our insights for the past half century. I credit him with teaching me to think. He was and remains the greatest intellectual challenge I have ever benefited from. It’s very difficult to imagine my life without him in it.

My Search for Meaning

One of my favorite books is Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” in which he describes how the Nazis could deprive him of everything in life, except for his ability to choose his response to it. Given the insane depravity he suffered, it was nothing short of a miracle that he was able to show such leadership and survive.

It taught me that choosing our response really is everything.

Look at it in the context of living your life. Whether you become miserable based on what happens around you or not, the reality of it will remain the same. The universe basically isn’t so terribly concerned with your attitude. It will just keep going on.

So, if your response is acceptance, the reality will remain the same. You really can lose and be okay, or lose and be miserable. It really is your choice.

That said, we really benefit from considering what is really important to us, and what the consequences of our responses really are.

This is where the Buddhist concept of “embracing impermanence” really begins to resonate with me. More simply put, there is the great truth that nothing lasts forever, including us. And our loved ones.

Celebrate and Proceed

My response to the passing of my mentor actually began with a very encouraging conversation with my son Josh who observed that Dr. Gary Gumpert enjoyed a long, extraordinary life. He spent literally all of it traveling the world delivering wonderful academic papers on communications, his great passion. He learned from the best, including Marshall McLuhan. He became a “force of nature” among his peers. Just a few months before his passing he was in far-away places still delivering insight and knowledge.

Very good point, Josh.

My response to his passing is to celebrate who he was and what he got to do while he was here. I think about myself as being only one of thousands of fortunate students who gained from his teaching and mentoring. My own students once gave me a plaque that read, “A teacher affects eternity. They never know where their influence ends.” That was so very true of Gary Gumpert and I am thankful for the half century I got to spend working with him and learning from him.

My time with Michelle was shorter, but so very full. Watching her and Josh fall in love and build a life together and create our grandson Franklin and raise him to be so smart and so strong. Even at age six, he is wonderfully wise thanks to both his parents and the wonderful wisdom they showed in raising him.

Then I look around myself.

My son Josh fills my heart with his own amazing capacity to love and to give to others and to build up all those who are around him. He is not only a successful entrepreneur, he is truly a good, good man. Even now as he is still hurting and dealing with the grief of his loss he continues to reach out and take care of others.

My son Steve has also enjoyed wonderful success as a listener, a leader, and a lifelong learner. He and his wife, Dana, have built a wonderful life for themselves and their son, Mason. He constantly demonstrates great insight in his ongoing efforts to raise up and inspire his many direct and indirect reports and the partners and others he works with.

Then there’s my wife. To say I’m thankful to have been blessed with so remarkable a woman to share my life would be vast understatement. Karrie is a joy to all who know her. Most of our friends’ children refer to her as “Grammy” because that’s just who she is to them. Always bringing them smiles and laughter and love. I can’t imagine anyone being so incredibly supportive and loving to me. To be totally frank, I often cannot understand how she tolerates my madness.

Thankful in a Year of Loss

There’s much more to be thankful for. I live in a town full of wonderful, friendly, caring people who truly contribute and support the common good. We have amazing friends both in my business life and in our lives outside of work. The best word I can think of to describe our current lives is “blessed.”

No doubt we have suffered losses, and we will suffer more losses. The losses we have suffered this past year have been wrenching. But there will always be loss because nothing lasts forever. When we focus on the present moment in our lives, we find there’s always so very much to be thankful for.

Have a happy Thanksgiving seeking and finding all you have to be thankful for.