Gratitude Beyond the Platitude: An Attitude of Splatitude

(Prelude: For eleven years, I focused on a job in Academia. Now that dream has eluded me. A cold wind of reality has struck my face, and the only response can be: Gratitude. -- SMAL 4/29/10)

Platitude:

Oh, whoops! That's a Platypus! ;-)

But surely, many of us have heard the phrase, "Have an attitude of gratitude." I know my dad said that at least once. And you're right, Dad. But through overuse, having an attitude of gratitude has become a platitude. (Though not, to my knowledge, a platypus.)

And yet, Life has a way of hitting us in the face--SPLAT! Dreams dashed to the ground, a china vase by an omnipotent and irrestable Zeus in the form of a bull. An entire projected life, abducted like Europa. And...

...what then?

If God exists, and if God loves us, and if God is omnipotent, then all things work for the good of those who love Him. Everything. Every detail of my mundane and recently disappointing life. (50+ rejected work applications. That's more than the number of girls who turned me down for a date in college!) The color of this blog, for example, or the crispness of the grass this morning, while I biked through the searing breeze to my last class of the semester. Of my last class taught at Notre Dame, and possibly the last class I'll teach in my entire career. Farewell, career.

But in the abduction of the dream there must be an act of love, so in the farewell there must be an act of gratitude. And in the face of sorrow, such an act goes beyond the platitude. It goes into "splatitude."

It goes to the point where everytime the pie of life strikes your best suit--SPLAT!--you habitually respond with, "Thank you!" Gratitude.

Splat + Gratitude = Splatitude. Relish the portmanteau. After all, it's a gift. :-)

Deus, nobis ingratis sit splatitudo. Amen.