Nighttime Gratitude 19 April

By Jim Winship, Whitewater, Wisconsin, U.S.

Anxiety and its older sibling Fear and its first cousin Stressed Out—they are violating our social distance these days. They get close; they close in on us. Now, I am fortunate not to suffer chronic anxiety or panic attacks. I am just someone who gets really anxious at times, and those “anxious at times” moments have gotten more frequent since the advent of the pandemic.

I have been reading Sarah Wilson’s book, First We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Conversation about Anxiety. It’s worth reading, and one of the things that she suggests is, before you go to bed every night, think of four or five things that you are grateful for.

For more than a week, I have been following this practice. Two nights ago, these were the things for which I was grateful:

I was grateful that when I looked in the freezer I found some Italian sausage. I put that together with other veggies that we had, making sausage and peppers over pasta—good comfort food. Thinking about it, having the Italian sausage in the freezer is representative of a kitchen with lots of food in a comfortable house. We are fortunate and privileged.

I was grateful for our dog Virgil, a twelve-year-old greyhound. When Virgil runs, he is fast and graceful, and much of the time he is very content spending time with us and lying around. When I am reading and he comes close to get his head scratched, I smile.

I was grateful that our daughter Hope calls us at night as she is driving home after a twelve-hour shift at the Operation Center of California’s Office of Emergency Services. She is part of a team working to obtain medical supplies for this pandemic and to prepare for the next crisis. We ask her about her day. The work is often frustrating, as they are setting up new procedures and helping long-term employees see the benefit of doing things differently than they are used to— and sometimes there are small victories.

She asks us how our day has been, and I tell her about my online teaching. We talk of taking hikes in the nearby nature preserve, of making food, books, a jigsaw puzzle, Netflix. Our days in many ways resemble pre-COVID-19 life, and I think she finds this reassuring. Talking to us also keeps her alert on the twenty-minute drive back to her apartment.

I am not sure that this gratefulness practice is reducing my anxiety, but it does seem that my dreams have been more pleasant since I began.