Don’t Forget to Say Thank You!
By Sandra Post | 4th November 2007
According to my younger sources, phone books and dictionaries are passé. Information they provide is now checked online. I refute that claim, realizing no matter how eloquent my argument, it can’t be proven true or false. To explain further, “younger” is a relative term at best, depending on the age of the person doing the comparison. For me, younger refers to anyone younger than my children. I realize that standard of measurement must change eventually. Should I live long enough to have a 50 year old “child,” I must concede their age is moving right up the longevity ladder. But for now, anyone 34 years of age or less is younger.
I never planned to be “older.” Not that I was planning to exit this world prematurely, but sometimes, and I emphasize sometimes, older denotes an out-of-touch mentality. I balked at the mindset. Youth suggests vibrancy, freethinking, less restrictive behavior, more of what I was hoping to achieve. I might have succeeded except technology exploded with capabilities and contraptions far beyond my comprehension. My lack of knowledge coupled with hormonal changes, thought those ended with puberty, adversely affected my ability to process unfamiliar information. Overnight it seemed, I was in the chronologically advanced generation thumbing through telephone directories and dictionaries.
Fast forward to fall, 2007. I’m planning to write an inspirational essay on gratitude. I mentally mull subjects over long before they hit the computer screen. (I do have some basic technological knowledge, appropriate for circa 1995. Charming.) Sometimes even advance planning provides little inspiration. Thoughts don’t transfer to words and said article remains blank. I remembered buying a greeting card featuring a lovely sentiment on gratitude. A quick card box search reminds me I’ve already sent it to someone.
Suddenly youth comes bounding into the fragile network of my memory and I think like the young people and go online, typing in the quote as best I remember it and viola’ it’s there! Still coming up short in the inspiration department, I type in gratitude and lovely sentiments appear. I’m feeling decades younger!
The phone book, dictionary and thesaurus will remain on my bookshelves. I would feel incomplete without them. But I’ll remember my newly found alternate sources and cash in on such usefulness. Maybe that’s how gratitude works. We appreciate the familiar and learn to accept the changes we experience in our lives. Like blending two families when there’s a marriage or learning to carry on without a loved one when there’s a death. Never forgetting, but appreciating the past and anticipating future joys and challenges. Might be part of living young also.
According to Wikipedia, the free online Encyclopedia, “Gratitude is the substance of a heart ready to show appreciation or thankfulness…” Beautiful! Further it says gratitude is not simply an emotion, which involves a pleasant feeling that can occur when we receive a favor from someone, but a combination of being and emotion, often accompanied by a desire to thank the person or reciprocate.
And the quote I was looking for? Meister Eckhart, German theologian, philosopher and mystic says “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”
During this Thanksgiving season and in all seasons, let us remember often to say a heartfelt “Thank you.”