There comes a point where you are grasping at straws. When you know there are things to be grateful for, but you are just so beaten down, and rightfully so, that you have moved beyond the ability to voice gratitude. When you get past the, “Wow, I survived it” and you look at the aftermath and what you will need to do to get on with gettin’ on, it’s less about gratitude and more about trying to find any silver lining that you can, even if it’s just a bit of black humor.
Because when you get to that point, you have to reevaluate your perceptions of things, what your actual needs are in this now, and where the path leads from here. At the point beyond gratitude where you have start the long march back up the hill, if you don’t reevaluate what you have in your pack you could be needlessly hauling around items that no longer serve, are broken, or have become more than absurd. So before you attempt to find hope, before you plug-in the platitudes and the homilies, pull out that reality check you have stashed away for a rainy day. Cash it in and really look at where you are, what you have with you, and where you are going. You might need to go in a new direction, you might need to gather different things, you might need to dump everything and start from nothing, you might need to wait until others can catch up, you might need to strike out on your own.
Whatever it is you need, you won’t know it unless you look for the silver lining in that has happened. Look up. I know it’s hard, you’re tired and all you want to do is put your head down and never get up again. But look up. Because there is more than just this moment and this is not all there is. You’ll get through this now, and the next, and the next, and when you do things will be different, most likely better, and all of this will be a memory incorporated into what we call experience and possibly generating wisdom. Now there’s a silver lining for you.