Thursday, February 14, 2008

GIVENS, TAKENS, GIFTS

How often I sit here to witness the process of givens and takens and gifts. Today I talked with Barb about multiple sclerosis. One minute, for example, you have a body—a given. The next minute you have multiple sclerosis. Your life is permanently altered because some function plus your faith in the future of your body is taken. And then, when a function returns, perhaps you are able to move your leg again, that movement, once a given, is now a gift.
With Barb’s observations in mind, and a dollop of gratitude that I have never been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I hope to work on short-circuiting the process, so that more of my givens could be seen as gifts without enduring the painful process of having them taken. Yes, I understand that a celebration wouldn’t be a celebration if it were routine. Christmas is only special because it happens occasionally. Still, it seems a shame that givens—like health—have to be taken, or seriously threatened, before we can truly celebrate them as gifts.
Perhaps the first step is to imagine my life without things I take for granted. There are the big things, like meeting David after work, and getting phone calls from the kids. The loss of these would be so large, so traumatic. And then there are the things of no apparent consequence, my navel for one. How would I feel if I woke one morning to discover that it had gone missing, filled in without warning and grown over with skin? My life wouldn’t seem to be changed. Yet it would be different. My faith in the continuation of things with no apparent consequence would be permanently shaken. And so, with Joni Mitchell’s voice singing, “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone” ringing in my head, I give over these few lines to a celebration of all the unnamed, unnoticed givens in my life that would become potential future gifts the moment after I lost them.

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