How to Count Your Blessings
One of the most difficult things to do, is to be grateful. Simple as it sounds, acknowledging one’s blessings, or admitting that luck or grace had any role to play in a certain outcome, outside of one’s personal efforts, is very difficult to do. The reason isn’t inherently selfish, nor is necessarily symptomatic of a tendency towards ingratitude. No, far from it. It is simply and purely as a result of pride. Ego if you like. The idea of gratitude, be it to another person, an entity or circumstances happening outside one’s control, often supplants the need for self-promotion or self-acclaim. “I did it”, tells a more powerful story, compelling if you like, than any other thing in narrating success.
The truth is, acknowledging help or even luck, is fast becoming the outlier in building a personal brand. I have seen this happen more often than I care to admit. Whereas in other parts of the world where it is still noble to talk about personal success while accrediting elements or people, who have all come together to help achieve this success, in my own country, this practice is becoming the anomaly. When you meet a Nigerian millionaire — or billionaire at that — for instance, the question of how he/she came into that level of wealth and accomplishment, is almost always met with a monologue of, “I worked hard; I remained focused” etc.
In the rare occasion of circumspection, when asked about how others can emulate their success stories, or replicate their success, the Nigerian rich man would rather say, “God did it, thank God for his mercies”. A typical non-answer disguised as piety or gratitude to the divine, all in service to an idea of self-promotion, where obfuscation in order to protect against meaningful sharing of information (which I might add, could serve as a tool to empower others), remains the sharpest tool in the shed to be joyfully deployed against sharing said success spotlight, with those really deserving of it.
Now, don’t get me wrong: gratitude to God is a way of counting one’s blessings, however, there’s a distinction to be made between one who sees his success as nothing short of a miracle, and another who merely makes mention of God as a prop, to avoid talking of anyone or anything else but himself.
When you stop to consider it, “blessing” in and of itself, suggests an unmerited act, something outside one’s direct effort. Never mind whether or not it is extraordinary, the point is that any action done in one’s favor, that adds positively either to one’s efforts, or lack of, is a blessing. This point is important to note if anything else is to make sense.
So, when one is self-aware to the point of acknowledging blessings that have been bestowed upon him, then he is halfway there. What remains is merely how to identify those blessings in order to count them. I offer these three accompanying points:
Introspection
As easy as it sounds concept-wise, not a lot of people are able to introspect. What, between sticking with the culture of self, merit and sometimes suffering from grand delusion, the concept of introspection as a tool for assessment, is often lost. Yet, it is nonetheless an important tool to possess.
By taking the time to look inwards and take stock of one’s actions and circumstances that may have led to a particular outcome, it is possible to stumble upon the truth of the nature of what led to what, who led to what and how all that came together to produce said outcome.
Nelson Mandela, that bigger than life personality, world acclaimed hero that emerged from the dark ages of apartheid, was often asked how he found the strength to let go of his resentment towards his prosecutors, anger towards his oppressors and contempt for the system that meant degradation for his race. Under the spotlight of the global stage and the admiration of millions across the world, he could just have easily found a flattery, bogus praise for his resilience or something close. However, he always pointed to his time at Robben Island and the introspection that came as a result of being imprisoned under those circumstances at the time. His answer, “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.” In that moment, he confessed that even an awful thing like getting jailed on trumped up charges, could in fact be a blessing. Giving credence to the words of Marcus Aurelius, when he said, “if you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment”. In Mandela’s case, while his blessing was midwifed through a painful experience, the result was learning to let go of anger and pain, not seeking vengeance, an act that won him a place in history, without which his story would have never featured, not even as a blip, in the annals of history.
Humility
For one to truly appreciate how blessed he/she is, humility has to be a possessed virtue.
It is often said that the great ones, know to exit the stage when the applause is loudest. I say that it isn’t a requirement of greatness to know that, nor is it common to find that amongst great people. However, it is probable, possessing that knowledge and having the good grace to practice it, is a hallmark of great people, who also learnt to be humble. When we look back at history, one of such towering figures, is represented in the person of George Washington. This man whose military success was only dwarfed by his statesmanship, had the opportunity to seize power indefinitely with the understanding, encouragement even, of a grateful nation in complete awe of him; chose instead to resign his military commission at the end of its tenure. Then, like the case of lightning striking twice, when elected democratically to be President of the United States of America, he chose to complete his two constitutional terms and go home. This position was neither common in his time, neither was it expected of one with such close proximity to power. Yet, it was Mr. President’s (as he chose to be called) conviction, that character rather than control, was a better tool in leadership especially when the stakes are so high. I dare say humility, is a better feature of leadership than perhaps any other factor when entrusted with power.
Far above anything else, it is humility that accounts for the ability of a person to not just get swept up in the strong currents of people’s praises and adulations, or the ability to have any kind of self-restraint in the buffet-style, do all and take all within your reach in moments of loud and undeniable success. It is the ability to realize that while playing a huge role in this success, other events outside one’s own control, helped to make the difference between near success and eventual success. Humility keeps the victor grounded and clear-eyed to the realism that encourages sharing credit to what and whom it is due.
It is no wonder that when George Washington decided to forgo entitlement on account of gratitude, in those final moments before he left office and rode metaphorically into the sunset, his farewell message was, “I am unconscious of intentional error; I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors.” To him, counting his blessings meant having the humility to know that having a bigger-than-life profile didn’t negate the possibility of fumbling every now and then. Counting your blessings, must feature the humility to know even as Julius Caesar was reminded so often, that despite the illusion of absolute control, memento mori — remember that you are only mortal. Or in other words, you are only human — sometimes blessings are events that happen in spite of personal shortcomings, not as a result of infallibility.
Perspective
One lesson from high school that has remained with me even now, was one gotten from a physics class on the fragmentation of light. I remember learning that white light was made up of many different colors. The day I saw it in practice, with the use of a prism to break white light into its different components, was a really special day. A day I will likely never forget. It wasn’t just about the light showing off its different components, it was also the way the prism was used to depict how light presumably traveling in a straight line, could bend or appear contorted, based on a number of optical tools to offer perspective.
Perspective is how we see the world. The evergreen question of which came first: the chicken or the egg? Or the conundrum always posed by identifying, which is which between six and nine depending on one’s angle or plain of sight, are all good examples of how perspective could shape opinion or understanding. It is indeed a very powerful phenomenon in understanding limitation of personal effort on one hand, and the role of contributing factors in producing final outcome, on the other.
Oprah Winfrey, one of the world’s undoubtedly most influential figures, survived deep personal trauma that might have broken a lot of other people. She came back from it. Not only did she come back stronger, but she was also able to achieve a wild level of success thereafter, in spite of it. Interestingly, her default response to questions of how all that was possible, is often in credit to not merely hard work or personal resolve, but to her faith. As she said once, “I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become — and I know that God’s hand has always been on my life”. Her perspective: using a spiritual lens to contemplate her achievements and success is a way to admit that success — her success — had to have more to it than personal agency.
Blessings are indeed all around us, happening to each of us more often than we may care to admit. The recalibration of perspective to see how they affect our ups and downs, is necessary in learning to count them.
How does one learn to count his/her blessings? You do that by learning that you are part of a whole; not the whole. You learn to acknowledge that there’s an ebb and flow of nature flowing all around you, your actions, intentions and decisions, sometimes with the touch of the divine, connive to help carry you often without consent or even consultation. It is important to remember that control is an illusion, absolute control in the way it produces an intended outcome, is an arbitrary thing. There is more, there has to be more, to explain why good fortune happens, why on the backdrop of success sometimes, joy is cut off prematurely. It can’t just all rest on you. Maybe if you were Atlas, the mythical being with the strength of hundreds, tasked with the simple goal of rolling a stone up a hill. Maybe then, but even he failed.
When next you have to get up on that big stage to deliver that big speech, accept a big award, or to accept the high praise of society, take a moment to be retrospective enough to acknowledge the role played by unseen forces that pushed you up onto that stage. In simpler terms, take a moment to count your blessings, count them one by one indeed. Memento mori, after all.