Gratitude for Compulsion

Life’s compulsion cannot be denied. Much of what happens to us was not our choice — the time of our birth, our family, our geography, our economy, our illnesses, our deaths. All of it lies within the circle of compulsion.

Yet within that compulsion there is an opening: gratitude.

Hafez writes: “Thank God that He esteemed no one as nothing / for each person, according to their inner capacity, saw something and something withheld.” Each of us, in proportion to the capacity of our inner vessel, has received something.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said: “Not my will, but Thine.” That surrender was miraculous. In the very moment when everything was being taken from him, Jesus entrusted everything to God.

Gratitude breaks the trap of victimhood. A victim is someone who constantly asks, “Why me?” A grateful person asks, “Who is holding me in this moment?”

Compulsion is real. But surrender is also real. Within surrender, there is freedom.