This weekend my partner and I had the privilege of spending a few days in Big Sur, the jewel of the California coast. With meandering creeks and ancient redwoods on one side and an impossibly huge expanse of Pacific Ocean on the other, we wanted to do nothing but sit and soak it in, first staring one way, then the other, and back again. The awesomeness (and I mean that in its original, non-Kardashian sense) defied words. There was only silence between Traci and me, broken up by the occasional and feeble, “God, aren’t we lucky to be here?”
At an overlook I even said this to a total stranger, who replied, “I was just thinking that! What a blessing.” Sure, you can spend massive amounts of money for a cliff-side room in Big Sur, but you don’t need to. A car, a day off and a willingness to accept what the day offers is pretty much all any Californian needs to be reminded why everyone has heard of our state.
A lifelong Californian, this was only my second time in Big Sur. I’m an idiot but that’s not quite my point. Perhaps my point is, rather, that though there are few places grander on earth, Big Sur reminded me that moments of appreciation for life’s gifts are available all the time, if I’d only summon the comparatively paltry energy to seek them out. It’s not the view itself, but the willingness to see it.
In the midst of our gee-whiz reverie, we got an email from someone we both love very much. He described in detail his regret about the lost opportunities of his life, and his despair about the choices that didn’t pan out as planned. His boyhood dreams mock him now. We wondered how he would have felt if he were sitting there with us, watching the sun go down.
Would it be as bad? It’s not that we didn’t take his sadness seriously we did. Our hearts ached for him and if we could have magically changed the past, we would have. But here we were, with dramatic proof that regardless of every hurt and insult, for most of us it is possible to make the choice to stop, breath and experience beauty. It’s there for the taking.
Our friend still possessed the power of choice, and much more too: security, health, freedom, and the love of people in his life. Though much still lies ahead of him, I sensed that he could only see the past, which I do not deny was marked by injustice and pain. I know, though, that he is blessed this very moment.
My only wish for him is that he could feel it every once in a while, as Traci and I did this week, in Big Sur, and as we vowed to stop and notice more often, even when we’re not in places that practically hit you over the head with something to be grateful for.
Since I’m supposed to be writing an LGBT column, I’ll now try to share what this has to do with our community. We are nowhere near where we know we should be when it comes to civil rights. In some places in the world, we’re even going backwards. Russia, India I’m talking to you.
Many of us are still isolated in unsupportive communities or shunned by the people we love. We should be fighting any urge to rest on the laurels of our amazing victories of 2013 (DOMA, ordinary people voting for equality). Gratitude for what’s good, however, is something else entirely.
To everyone, every day, whoever summoned the courage to stand up for justice even when things appeared hopeless, I’m grateful to you for the freedom I often take for granted. To every parent who chose to embrace your LGBT kid even if you didn’t understand the LGBT part, I thank you for tilting the universal scales a little more towards love. No matter what 2014 brings, good or bad, may we all feel blessed, loved, and awed by the simple beauty of life on a regular basis.
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