Count Your Blessings

In the mid-90s I worked in a peace education nonprofit in Cambridge. We employed a lot of what were called "work study" students each year, most of whom came from the Div School or Ed School at Harvard, as did I originally (both of them). All of our workers were great: hard working and intelligent, and usually with a good sense of humor. I remember most of them, but I remember one especially. Let me tell you why. Just in pure work terms he was among the best. He was kind, conscientious, hard-working, and smart, and, get this, he could type more than 100 words a minute. I can still hear those fingers flying over the keys. Finally the end of the year came and it was his time to leave. And I'll never forget how he went to our bosses and said, "I really want to thank you so much for putting your faith in me and giving me this opportunity." Never mind that it was us that got the best deal in the bargain -- by a country mile. I mean, it's absurd how underpaid he was relative to what he brought. That made a huge impression on me and I thought it was one of the classiest gestures I had ever seen. And I vowed that I would try to be that way if I could. 

Needless to say I have fallen short even under the best of circumstances. And then, when my career got headed down a bad and tragic path, and I entered into a stage of hell really, it certainly was hard to be grateful. But that's when gratitude became most crucial. Conscious gratitude. I made it a point to be grateful for what I did have that was good. And it boiled down to the little things, my dog, my home, the beauty of nature and music, friends. There was no way I could pretend the big picture was good, and in fact the big picture was one that seemed like it must be someone else's, it was so foreign to what I thought could happen for me. So I clung to those small blessings, hard. I made the effort, and it kept me from going under. So there isn't really a time when gratitude isn't appropriate. When things are going well, the only proper response is gratitude. And when they aren't going well, gratitude is what keeps you in the game, so you are ready for when those good times present themselves once again. In fact, for many, many years I have been in what amounts to the opposite of those bad days. Indeed, it's striking how much everyone in our office explicitly practices gratitude. There are many people who make more money that we do, but we make enough, and we know how lucky we are to get paid to apply the best parts of ourselves everyday.

Of all the things I've ever written at this site, this certainly is one of the least surprising or original or counter-intuitive. I'm communicating nothing more than received wisdom, but I feel in my bones that it is deeply true and important. I had been thinking about this since Thanksgiving, so thought I should write it up. Oh, and thank you for reading. It really does mean the world to me.