A few weeks ago we drove our van to Michigan so we could spend some time giving thanks around piles of turkey, chicken, beef, goose, vegetables drowned in butter, and so much dessert piled on a table that if you looked at it too long, you'd fall into a diabetic coma. You had to pass the dessert table quickly or you'd wake up to find yourself splayed out on a folding chair, rubbing your belly, and quietly moaning in regret.
Yet my kids still found something to complain about, mainly the three little beans which were threatening them from the plate in front of them. Well, to be fair, Janice did most of the threatening. "You have to eat your beans before you can have pumpkin pie!"
The children whine hysterically, saying things like their life is difficult and fate is a cruel dictator and why did God invent beans?
"Look," I say, always the voice of reason, "If you choke down three stupid beans, you can have fourteen pounds of pumpkin pie. I'm no mathematician, but that's a pretty good ratio."
"Daddy, what's a magic-a-diction?" Oliver asks, and I try not to laugh because as soon as Oliver makes you laugh, he gets his way. He's pretty good at it.
"Just eat the beans."
Really, kids are just more honest versions of adults. And sometimes we get too distracted by bad things to notice the good things. Or we compare our good things to other peoples better things, and suddenly all we can see is the difference, and that difference is a big problem to us. Such is the saying, "The grass is always greener on the other side."
As we were driving to Michigan, I noticed everyone else was driving somewhere too. Travel during the holidays is a staple of culture everywhere, even Papua New Guinea (where we fix missionary floatplanes). Sure, traveling in a dugout canoe with a screaming two-stroke engine for hours on a river is different than traveling in a minivan with a screaming baby for hours on a toll road, but it's still kind of the same. The point is that there's always a huge crowd of people returning to their homes for the holidays.
But why did we ever leave? We all left home to look for our own patch of greener grass. Sure, we can pause our search for a few days over the holidays but even then we spend most of our time talking about how our search for greener grass is going. How did you find it? Where was it? Do you think the grass will stay green? Or maybe it'll dry up? Mine is getting kind of brown lately. Maybe your grass is greener than mine? That's only because you're lucky. Why can't I ever get lucky? And on and on.
Being missionaries certainly doesn't make us immune to such things. The best way to demonstrate this is to use my wife, Janice, as an example. Haha.
During our last term in Papua New Guinea, we visited a bush village called Samban. Janice found out that a neighboring village loosely managed a herd of cows. By loosely managed, I mean that if the semi-feral herd wandered close enough to the village, the villagers would kidnap a calf and sell it to you for the right price. Janice immediately announced we would be walking to the next village to see if they had any calves for sale. The logistics of transporting a calf for two days overland into our city and raising it in on a crowded half-acre compound could always be figured out later.
You see, Janice grew up on a dairy farm where they had a garden large enough to be seen from space. Now we were living on a slab of concrete in the middle of an urban metropolis known as Wewak where fresh milk was non-existent. The best "milk" we could buy was heat treated so severely that it could be stored for a year without refrigeration. So Janice wanted a cow. And a garden. She had neither so we began walking for an hour to a mythical village with a mythical herd of cows.
"What are we going to do with a cow?" I asked. All I knew about cows was that they were expensive and farmers always seemed to complain about being broke. I was a bit worried since we were already trying to be missionaries. We couldn't afford to be farmers too.
"Oh lots of things!" Janice excitedly replied, "We would have fresh milk. We could make yogurt. Oh! And cottage cheese!" Janice almost levitated with joy at the thought of cottage cheese, which I thought was repulsive. (The cottage cheese that is, not the joy.)
"Yea I get that, but I mean we don't even have space for anything. Where will we put a cow? It's a ridiculous idea."
"We could even make ice cream!" Janice replied.
"Well," I said, "Maybe you're onto something."
But the herd was off looking for greener grass that day and the villagers weren't interested in dragging a calf that far. Still, it was a good walk and I needed the exercise.
Now that we're back in Ohio for a bit (we came back for a break and to have a baby), Janice seems to think the farmers around us are spoiled and don't know it.
"Look at all those cows! I hope that farmer knows how lucky he is."
"When he woke up at 4am to milk cows in the subzero Ohio winter, I'm sure he was quite content," I said, reassuringly.
As missionaries we come home to America and see lots of people with stable lives and we can get a bit jealous, since we feel so uprooted.
Meanwhile, people here who are going about their stable lives hear about us getting stuck in the Port Moresby airport because all our flights were canceled for the hundredth time, and they get a bit unsatisfied. Jealous, even. "I wish I was stuck in an airport that was surrounded by palm trees" they say, as they wake up at 4 am to milk cows in the subzero Ohio winter.
People in Michigan wish they were in Florida. Floridians wish they could be skiing instead of sweating. Americans want to live in Jamaica. Jamaicans want to see New York City. When we're hungry we wish we had food. When we have food, we wish we could stop eating so we could be skinny. When we're skinny, we wish we could eat food but we can't because we don't want to get fat. When we're poor, we wish we were rich. When we're rich, we wish we were richer. I'm not sure a rich man ever wanted to be poor. I dunno. Anyway, I ran out of examples and I think you're smart enough to get the idea.
No matter where you are, who you are, or where you're going, if you give it a long enough time, you will wish you were somewhere else, somebody else, or going to a different place.
It's a problem because if we're always looking across the fence it means we never appreciate what's on our side of the fence. And according to some podcast my wife told me about, when we build a habit of being resentful and bitter about our life, our brain actually builds neuron pathways that reinforce that attitude. Which means ungratefulness becomes a habit. It's a well worn pathway right off into the abyss of grumpiness. Once you program your brain to follow the wagon ruts worn into your brain, it's hard to get out of that track.
As Janice was explaining this to me, I immediately recognized the grumpy person she was describing; it was me! During the last few months of our last term in Papua New Guinea, you couldn't have found a more grumpy individual, at least not on a tropical island. I'm willing to bet there was a cold person fixing a car in Alaska or Siberia who was grumpier than me, but that's about it.
"So how do you not be grumpy?" I asked Janice, since she never is.
It turns out that, while you can build grumpy pathways in your brain, the opposite is also true. You can train your brain to be thankful. It requires you to practice, though.
Which reminds me of this book called "Atomic Habits." It was recommended to me by Luke, our Chief Pilot at Samaritan Aviation. He likes reading as much as flying, or so it seems because he always has a book recommendation for any situation in life.
"My fingernails are a bit long," I'll say just for conversation as we carpool to the hangar in the old rattletrap ambulance.
And Luke will say something like, "Oh, I read a book about that. You should read it too. It's called..."
On the other hand, Luke seems to be a well functioning human adult and whenever I find one of those I try to pay attention to how they do it because I'd like to be one too. So that's how I found myself reading "Atomic Habits."
In the book it talks about "Habit Stacking." The idea is that, if you want to begin a habit, you "stack it" on top of another event which happens routinely without fail.
For example: Juliet cries a lot. The other children figured out that if they start singing Christmas carols at the top of their lungs, Juliet stops crying and instead looks around with a startled look on her face. It's pretty funny. Now whenever Juliet cries, the children belt out a verse go "Go Tell It On The Mountain." It's a new habit that was started because it was "stacked" onto something else. The new habit is anchored to another one, one which happens automatically and without fail. Or, let's say you wish to do something virtuous, like read your Bible more. Start doing it when you drink coffee, since you drink coffee every morning without thinking about it. This is a good way to make a new habit part of the routine. That's what the book says, anyway. Maybe you should read it for yourself.
So I decided that instead of quitting my complaining habit, I'll simply stack a thanksgiving habit on top of it. Anytime I find myself complaining about Subject A, I'll also have to say something good to say about Subject A.
It's remarkably effective. Say I'm driving down the highway and I'm annoyed because of road work. After I complained a satisfactory amount, I'll try to say something like, "I'm thankful they are fixing the road so we don't have to drive over rivers on log bridges like they do in Papua New Guinea."
Self improvement is hard work and I don't like it. But... at least I can keep trying because I'm alive and not dead.
See? It works.
I'll leave you with this verse from Philippians:
11 I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength. (NIV)
