June 2, 2019

Dear St. Martin of Tours Parishioners,

I get bored sometimes. Since I don’t have a television, one of my options is to watch YouTube videos or to listen to Podcasts. Recently I came across a video by Dennis Prager, a conservative radio talk-show host, about something he has coined “The Missing Tile Syndrome.” It goes like this. Imagine yourself sitting in a room for a meeting or a class, and everything is neat and tidy, except just above you a ceiling tile is missing. It's human nature to ignore the tidiness of the rest of the room and to focus on that absent tile.

Prager uses this as an analogy for how many of us live our lives. We focus so much on what we perceive to be lacking, that we don't focus on the gifts and goodness that God has extended toward us. We look at our lives and our world as things to be fixed and problems to be solved, rather than as gifts to be expressed and opportunities to be explored.

Perfectionists tend to have the most difficult time with the Missing Tile Syndrome, because they have made it a habit to observe what is wrong rather than to enjoy all that is right. But there is, in fact, a Christian virtue we can choose to exercise in order to avoid the pitfalls of the Missing Tile. This virtue is called gratitude.

That’s because the opposite of gratitude is not ingratitude; it’s frustration – frustration that things aren’t as they ought to be. How often have we thought, “Things are going well, but if only such-and-such would happen; or if only I had this-and-that; or if only that person would….” You see the problem with “if-only” thinking. It effectively makes you put your life on hold until some future, which might never arrive.

By choosing to be grateful, we live our lives today knowing fully well that despite the imperfections of the present, there is still much good to be enjoyed and experienced.

And if you try to be grateful, yet cannot because your situation is so incredibly dire that life has become a burden, then you must fix the missing tile.

In Christ,