There is much to be grateful for
When someone practicing a different spiritual or philosophical tradition wishes you well from within their tradition, what’s the correct response?
Acceptance.
It’s something I ended up reflecting on and even changing my approach slightly after hearing well-wishes from several different directions.
I run the risk of this sounding condescending, and I in no way want it to come across that way. If anything, the last couple of weeks have made me more accepting and grateful for all of it, including those that, pedantically, I might disagree with.
After The Fall, it was heartening to hear all the well-wishes and prayers being said on my behalf. Here’s the thing: I consider myself a “recovering Catholic”, and identify as an atheist (though perhaps a confused one since I’m also an ordained minister 
).
So, how should I react if I believe there’s no one listening to those prayers?
It wasn’t always so, but my approach is to try to be grateful and accept well-wishes in whatever form they take. Even if I don’t believe prayers (or “healing vibes”, or whatever other energies and suplications might be made) actually do anything external, the fact that someone is giving of their time, energy, and love is not something to discard on a technicality.
They do something: they remind you that there are people who care, each in a way meaningful to them.
This led to an interesting conversation.
After moving to the ortho floor, we got a visit from a hospital chaplain. It turns out she had just come on shift, and was a very close friend with one of my very near and longest-term friends from Microsoft (who was scheduled to visit later that day). My friend had asked her friend to drop in. We had a very lovely conversation.
Naturally, she asked about my spirituality, and I responded as above: recovering Catholic, now atheist (though I left out the ordained minister part). I commented that this made the concept of people praying for me somewhat awkward, though I have so much to be grateful for.
Sadly, the exact words escape me, but she raised an interesting concept: when we are grateful, where is that gratitude directed? For some, it’s a deity. For others, it’s “the universe” or cosmic forces. For others, still, it’s Gaia or some other embodiment of life in general. I have at least one friend who struggles with this type of gratitude at all because they believe there is absolutely no legitimate target or higher power to give thanks to, period.
Particularly after this experience, I now direct my gratitude to people. It’s the people in my life, the actions that they take, the differences that they make, for which I am incredibly grateful. They make the choices, reach out, do the deeds, and make the difference.
People are my “higher power”.
And that’s a very odd place to find myself in.
Thoughts on “thoughts and prayers”
To be clear, I’m not talking about the “thoughts and prayers” trope. To me, that’s an excuse to feel good about doing nothing by thinking or convincing yourself you’ve done something. More often than not, they’re just performative.
No matter what you believe, the concept of “sending thoughts and prayers” can be downright evil when it prevents or excuses you from taking action or helping in more immediate, concrete ways.
That’s not what this essay is about. People thinking about and praying for me were doing so from a good place, and often in addition to stepping up to help or to reach out in very concrete, tangible ways. For this, I remain eternally grateful.
I agree about prayers and healing energy, etc. I’m a mostly atheist pagan who believes that energy can be manipulated. And that the collective unconscious or the universe is as good a name for that thing that is outside of my understanding. But I accept all good wishes, regardless of the tradition they come from. I figure they’re all essentially the same to each person. I am glad you have had all this support on your difficult journey.
Ramen.
IMO, while it’s important to thank people who wish us well, what’s important is feeling the gratitude — acknowledging it to yourself. Forgetting to feel the gratitude means it can escape your attention, becoming part of your being, and leading to feeling forgotten, the world sucks, things are bad, etc. It’s all a matter of focus.
Yeah, people who are injured or sick often feel really bad about it. “Why me?” “What did I do to deserve this?” (etc.) You chose to focus differently, and that focus has helped dramatically with your recovery. You realized it could have been SO much worse; for instance: your paralysis was, at least for the most part, temporary.
That’s huge.
In other words, gratitude is mainly about taking a moment to recognize it — to truly feel it. That is, I think, why it’s typically called “feeling gratitude.”