[ExI] for Henry

Fri Aug 7 02:15:35 UTC 2020

From: Henry Rivera <hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu> 
Subject: Re: [ExI] for Henry

>….That measuring humility comment, that’s priceless Spike. 

Sure, but what is the most priceless thing?  I am pretty sure if we set up some kind of contest or competition, I can come up with several pricelesser things than that, without even trying.

I heard of something they said was priceless: those paintings on the ceiling of that Sixteen Chapel.  No way Jose!  We could get those babies down, frame in a nice lacquered cherrywood, we could fetch a decent price out of em, thousands of bucks I bet.

>>…Sadness is to happiness as anger is to… 

>…That’s a tough one. 

How about...

>…Serenity. 

>…Or peacefulness?

>…Freedom even. Like, letting something go leads to a state of what? That’s what I mean by freedom. No longer being controlled, burdened by something. That’s coming from me with my therapist hat on clearly. 

OK cool thanks Henry.  I like your serenity answer.  I will offer one that I consider the closest to negative anger: gratitude.  I am a person filled with gratitude for how my life has turned out, how our world turned out, because I can so easily imagine so many ways things coulda gone so much more wrong.

Aside: I am regularly online with distant cousins who lived their lives (most of them) near where I was born.  It is economically blighted today.  The hospital where I was born went out of business a coupla months ago.  A few covid patients were their only customers, the rest  choosing to stay home and have their strokes and heart attacks treated by amateurs rather than risking catching something bad at the local hospital.  I got a notice on our family forum: if I want any of my medical records, apply for them now because they would be archived to where they weren’t necessarily accessible, not easily in any case.

A bunch of us were talking about it and deciding what to do.  I decided to let it go: I have a copy of my birth certificate.  I don’t care about the rest of it, if there is any.

As I kicked all this around, I realized how different my life is from my own cousins, many of whom are genetically similar, but whose lives were far different.  They live in a beautiful place out there, such nice surroundings, out in the country, nature, the hills and forest, beautiful.  But… there is very little money out there.  When I was born in 1960 I became the 800th citizen of Bellefonte KY.  Today… there are about 820 people living in that town, but many of them are in poor health.

I am filled with a profound sense of gratitude, which negates any anger I can stir within, even in our times when our own USA new media are making a living stirring up anger.  People will read the stories if they are sufficiently angry, and many will believe what they read.  

But I am filled with gratitude for how things turned out.  Sadness comes to us all.  I got one of my Kentucky second cousins into DNA genealogy, convinced him into doing a test, sent him the kit, yesterday I heard his sample went into PCR, today I find out he is in the hospital with a heart attack and it isn’t looking good, oy vey, and he had to go all the way into Ashland because the Bellefonte hospital is closed.  Meanwhile, my heart beats on as if nothing is wrong.  Why am I so lucky?  The law of averages will surely catch my ass one of these days.  But so far so good.

I am grateful.  A powerful emotion is gratitude.  It is negative anger.

spike

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