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Quote of the Day: Thankful for Gratitude
My sister, Gwynne, is one of the sweetest people in the world. Five kids in our family, I was the youngest and she the eldest and growing up she spoiled me rotten. Even today, if I’m coming over to visit she’ll ask, “What would you like for the dinner? Tamales? Pizza? Steak? Will you want cinnamon rolls for breakfast?” But the thing is, if she met you, she would probably find out your favorite dessert in ten minutes and be baking it within the hour.
She always kind, and I remember one particular instance when that kindness shined through. And so we, her brothers and sister teased her mercilessly for it.
We were on a car trip. One of my dad’s car trips. The seven of us were stuffed in the station wagon, I was always in the way back. The only reason to stop was for gas. Mom made sandwiches beforehand. Rest room stops were planned around those gas stops. (There was always a pot for emergencies.) On this particular trip, my dad needed help with directions. He didn’t often admit he needed help with directions, but he asked the attendant who pointed me dad in the right direction.
My sister, in the middle seat, called out thanks to the attendant. He didn’t seem to hear, so she called out again, “Thank you!” As we drove away, she rolled down the woman and called out, “Thank you! Thank you! THANK YOU!”
We, her brothers and sisters, of course, teased her mercilessly for her gratitude. But really, she was doing things right. We should be more grateful in our lives. The Mayo Clinic claims there are great benefits to thankfulness, improving physical health. It improves sleep patterns, mood, and the immune system. Gratitude decreases depression, anxiety, and even physical pain.
And really, as is true with most things in life, we could have learned this earlier if we just listened to G. K. Chesterton.
Chesterton wrote, “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
He pointed to the need to make gratitude part of our whole lives, “You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”
And he, of course, showed to where our gratitude should be directed, “When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?”
Listen to Chesterton. Even better, follow the example of Gwynne.
Published in Group Writing
I don’t do this as often as I should and the reason I know this is that when I do stop and devote all my thought to how grateful I am for the life I have been given it registers as the greatest possible gift. The wonder then comes to consciousness bringing awe with it. I take the gift as being the individual’s gift of choice in pursuit of the life experience. We get to witness this in all its variety. What a joy!
EDIT: I need to add that moral participation appears to help in the receipt of blessings.
I too have an older sister who was a great blessing in my young life. She still is.
Proverbs 68:19 –
Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.
Within the context of your post comes the importance of the helpful guidance of parents and siblings in the family throughout its term. I am at the stage in my life where I am grateful for the loving attention given my wife and me by our children. It is clear how they must divide their attention and efforts between us and their own children and grandchildren.
Being a parent is not a simple task and neither is being a child. Gratitude is an important feature for both to flourish.
I like your sister already.
I’ve gotten into the habit (in the best possible way) when little things go my way, to say thanks (meaning, to G-d). I have a kind of wonder when nice things happen, when people show kindness, even when I wake up with little pain. And I make sure not to say it mindlessly, but with intention. Makes my day full!
Yes! I always start my morning prayers with thanks; for my Creator, for His creation and for my family — the family in which I was raised and for my current family — naming them individually and asking for His protection and blessing.
I have found that acknowledging His blessings is a great way to start the day… it fixes the mind toward an attitude of gratitude.
I should learn my lesson to always have my wife proofread my posts. “Woman” for “window”! Ackkkk!
This conversation is encouraging. I confess that I am neither as grateful nor as forgiving as I should be.
And it makes for a society of greater peace and comity and trust. A society of surly ungrateful people is a society on the way down. The foolish sixties condemnation of the rituals of social courtesy as being “hypocritical”, in favor of “authenticity” and “keeping it real” were highly corrosive.
It is very fashionable among “progressives” to despise our ancestors as “dead white European males”, and yet everything we have was made by them or was built on the foundations that they made: The fruits of our civilization–technological, artistic, philosophical, moral–are the result of their efforts and the lessons that they learned often through great pain and suffering.
“…When we were that boy you say everyone’s talking of, or at least not much older, you directed us to Master Ultan’s stacks. Why did you do that?”
. . .
“You were young, and seemed a likely-looking boy, so I wanted you to see.”
“To see what?”
. . .
“I wanted you to see there has been a lot come before you. That there was thousands and thousands that lived and died before you was ever thought of, some better than you. I mean, Autarch, the way you was then. You’d think anybody growing up here in the old Citadel would be born knowing all that, but I’ve found they’re not. Being around it all the time, they don’t see it. But going down there to Master Ultan brings it home to the cleverer ones.”
“You are the advocate of the dead.”
The old man nodded. “I am. People talk about being fair to this one and that one, but nobody I ever heard talks about doing right by them. We take everything they had, which is all right. And spit, most often, on their opinions, which I suppose is all right too. But we ought to remember now and then how much of what we have we got from them.”
–Gene Wolfe, The Citadel of the Autarch, chapter XXXV Father Inire’s Letter
Thus: