Gratitude Mapping for Dummies

I lay the posterboard on the table in preparation to plot my gratitude map. I contemplate what topics I want to include to best describe what I appreciate about my life. After much thought, I write down in the center the word gratitude. Next, I write my wife and daughter near the top. I spread out other topics on my posterboard that includes my military career, college experience, time in Japan, the states I have lived in, the schools I have attended, the individual experiences most don’t get an opportunity to, and my successes and failures. I plot lines from the word gratitude to each topic I have added to my map. I next place intersecting lines to areas that influence each other. One of these intersections includes my military career connection to my time in Japan which connects to meeting my wife and the birth of my daughter. I look down to see the commonality between each topic and the connecting lines that display my life’s journey. If my journey were not filled with a fair share of failures, I would struggle to appreciate my successes and the opportunities I have been exposed to.

I observed on my gratitude map the journey started in a state I would only live in for the first year and a half of my life while my parents were in the military. Going back thirty years later, I was still accepted as one of their own when asked where I was born. After my father left the military, we continued to live an unstable nomadic life. He attended 2 colleges in different states and then worked for only a few years or less at each of his next jobs for the next ten years. When asked by many where I claimed to be from, my usual fallback response was everywhere and nowhere. A life of instability exposed me to different cultures in the South, New England, the Pacific Northwest, Florida, Japan, and the Philippines. I had my struggles with saying stupid things and doing things that go against their cultural expectations.

I plot a line from here to what I would call my three career changes. The first career I describe as my 13 years of basic schooling during my nomadic life included Florida (3), Massachusetts (2), Montana (1), Washington (2), and South Carolina (1). The different schools have given me some shocking moments I would have only expected in a movie scene, not real life. This has led to good, bad, and weird experiences. During one school year, I moved three times causing me to read Romeo and Juliet three times in English because each school studied it at a different time. I will admit it gave me an advantage reading it a third time in one year. I did issue a little sigh when I was forced to read Romeo and Juliet and watch the movie again.

Gratitude connects to my appreciation for my senior year of high school. I was never one to get into trouble at school, but my senior year made up for 12 years of no detention or suspension. This might sound extreme, but I had 30 days of detention in my math class for being late, sleeping, or not doing my homework. I did make it to the end of the school year, but I found out that on the last day of school, I would not be allowed to graduate and would have to repeat my senior year. I never failed a class during my 13 years of school. I did try hard to fail my French class every time, but somehow, I always failed by passing with a high D. I almost failed my senior year for three library books I did not return. I had to jump through hoops to prove I was not the one who checked out the books in my name. I was allowed to graduate only through proof that I did not check out the three books.  I was saved after a librarian I attended church vouched for me.

Even though college was not in my cards at first, I connected a line from my senior year to my failure to become an archeologist or a lawyer. I was inspired toward these two career fields through my desire to be like Indiana Jones, running from boulders, scrapping off spiders, fighting off Nazis, and swinging from my trusty whip.  My family wanted me to become a lawyer because I always picked the opposite side of every argument with my cousin. Even if neither of us believed in it, we had to fight for the other side as if our lives depended on it. I was not blessed like all of my friends who either received scholarships or had a parent with enough money to pay for it. I tried to attend college by paying for it out of pocket by working 70+ hours a week between one full-time graveyard job and another part-time job. That only worked for so long before I was too tired to keep up with the schedule. I temporarily gave up on the college dream to join the military.

I did not want to follow in my parent's footsteps through military service but it is still a point and line on my map that I am grateful for. I finally gave in to pay for college and to see the world. The day I turned 21 years old, I had a desire to escape my life. I walked into the local recruiter and I was headed off to bootcamp. For a career that gives me nightmares, I add my military career to the map. There were the sweet moments, the down ones, and 9/11. Each one gave me a beautiful pinpoint on my journey that I cherish today. The military gave me confidence and taught me how to lead. I appreciate this point because it influences the man I have become.

Even though my first marriage only lasted ten years during a portion of my second career, it is an addition to my gratitude map. When I married her, I loved her, when we got divorced, I still loved her. This marriage taught me how to love and support someone diagnosed with a mental disorder, and how to pick myself up after losing everything. After my divorce, my hurt was so deep, that I moved across the world to escape.

My escape adds Japan, my wife, and my daughter onto the map. A divorce that started in court on my birthday and ended the day I flew to Japan did give me an appreciation for my journey and the next woman I would marry. I hear that you should never marry someone you meet at a bar, but it was at a bar that I met my wife. The night I met her, she told me she invited me to her birthday party turning 28. She asked me to bring a cake to her party. She got a lot of curious looks at the cake. I found her lie out months later when I looked at her ID that she fibbed about her age. She turned 35. We can look back and laugh at this now.

I plot another point for her culture. I made a huge mistake when she was pregnant with our daughter, I told her what she was doing was weird. I was at her house when she was cooking spaghetti for her brother's birthday. I found this different so I made the tactical error of calling it weird. She found this rude and kicked me out of the house. Luckily, she forgave me and she gave birth to our daughter. This allowed me to do another birthday tradition for the first year of my daughter’s life. We got her a birthday cake every month on the anniversary of her birth.

My military career connects to Japan and connects to my wife leading another line to my daughter. My daughter on the map adds a new dimension to my appreciation for the journey I have been on. I learned fast that having a baby can create unique problems, especially with the rules of another country. We ran into a dilemma with picking her name based on Japanese rules, we were limited to 12 characters for her first and middle name. My wife had her first name set at 10 letters leaving me to come up with a middle name that was only two letters long. We were able to degree.

The naming process was part one but at her first doctor's appointment developed one fear. The nurse said she needed a vaccine that would prevent her brain from melting. I think there was something lost in translation. This wasn’t the first time I was told the loose translation for something. My daughter was told that gaga translated to the “F” word in Illongo. I learned later that it translated to stupid, my wife just didn’t want our daughter saying it for some reason. Between my daughter and my wife, they have both add a lot of gratitude to my lived experience.

I left the military life with my wife and daughter to work toward my third career. My journey has given me a hemorrhoid on the path to where I am without our daughter living with us and my wife stuck overseas waiting for a visa. We have quickly learned how difficult it can be with three denials and a fourth answer we still are waiting for. We have not given up hope but it has enabled us to appreciate each other more.

I lay my map down for now with the completion up to the most current point. I know it is not complete, but it is labeled interactively with the different points on my journey. Each topic is connected to the word gratitude. A quick observation shows how some topics connect and how they have influenced my journey. Hindsight has blessed me with the ability to appreciate the journey I have been on to get where I am now, but it is not complete and I look forward to seeing how each new area is added with a connection to gratitude and the journey I have already have placed.