AN ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE
I don’t know when or where I
first heard the phrase, “an attitude of gratitude.” It was from somewhere,
perhaps from someone on an audio cassette tape. Or maybe it was on a bumper
sticker. Wherever, whenever, however, I don’t remember. Well, it was catchy and
it caught me.
I look at my life and see all the
gifts and graces that I have received: family, friends, health, fun, faith, and
a whole photo album of great memories stored somewhere in the back room of my
mind. I’ve been blessed and at times I say, “Thank you, God!”
Yet, I step back in this month
that features Thanksgiving and I wonder: Do I have an attitude of gratitude? Do
I take the time to really appreciate all the gifts that God and so many others
have given me? I’m always rushing. And it seems to me that I’m must be missing
so much in this rush of trying not to miss anything.
I think of Chesterton’s short
poem, his short night prayer called, “Evening”:
“Here
dies another day
during
which I have had
eyes,
ears, hands,
and
the great world round me;
and
with tomorrow begins another.
Why
am I allowed two?”
Two? O my God, I’ll be 52 this
month and that means I’ve had almost 19,000 days of life so far.
So my prayer this Thanksgiving
will be: “Thank you, God.” And then I’ll add a prayer of sorrow: “Oh my God,
I’m sorry for being so unconscious on so many days.”
When I step back now to think
about it, so many days seem blank - a blur. They disappeared - without any
memories and any proof that I was anywhere or I did anything of service for
anyone that day.
So now I better add a further
prayer, “Lord, I’m not ready to make an account of my stewardship. I need more
time: time to wake up, time to shape up. So Lord, please give me more time. In
fact, what I would really love to have is 20 more years of days.” (Cf. Luke
16:2; Luke 13:6-9.)
And then I laugh, because I know
that if I make it till I’m 72 - the year
will be 2011 - I’ll probably be asking once again for even more days of life.
WIGGLING MY TOES
I think of a 77 year old man I
met somewhere in my travels. He taught me a great morning prayer, “I wake up. I
just lay there for a moment and then I wiggle my toes. If they move, then I
say, `Thank you, Lord, for one more day of life.’”
Isn’t that a great attitude? As I
think back about him, I would certainly classify him as someone with an
attitude of gratitude. Two years after I met him, his wife died. A year latter
he married again. He is still living and still very much alive, wiggling his
toes each morning and walking around each day, bringing joy to people that he
meets. I would not mind having breakfast with him every morning. He seemed like
the type of person who would be quite alive from the first moment of each new
day.
ON BEING A MORNING PERSON
Yes, I like morning people. I am
one myself. I get up every morning at 6:30 and have the luxury of being able to
walk a half-mile to the Hudson River - all downhill. I walk to the water’s
edge, bend down and put my hand in the water. It’s quite a Holy Water font. I then make the sign
of the cross and having learned from the old man who wiggles his toes each
morning, I too thank the Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit for the gift of another day.
Then facing the east, I stretch out
my arms and say out loud, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the
Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.”
Then I climb back uphill and
arrive home with a mile walk under my toes - and ready for a nice refreshing
shower.
Isn’t that a great way of
beginning a new day? However, once snow arrives, I have to change my pattern.
Most winter mornings I stay indoors. Fortunately, I live in a big building with
four sets of stairs and four floors. So I have come up with a neat routine of
climbing one set of stairs to the fourth floor, walking the length of the
building and going down another set of stairs to the basement, walking the
length of the building and going up to the top again. I do that five times. Let
me tell you, it’s much tougher than a walk to the river. And it has produced a
different morning prayer - sometimes said with grunts. Naturally, I long for
the spring and the great outdoors and a morning walk to the river.
How do you begin your day? Wiggle
your toes? Cup of coffee? A long shower? A long walk? Running? Prayers?
Exercises? Turning on the radio to get any late breaking news from around the
world? Reading the paper?
Various people have told me that
they pray best in the morning with a cup of coffee - sitting alone at the
kitchen table with their bible or prayer book or sitting in a favorite chair
near a window.
What’s your morning attitude? Is
it an attitude of gratitude for the gift of one more day of life? How do you
begin your day? Do you have a personal morning prayer? Be original. Be
creative. Surprise yourself and surprise God with your own words, your own
chant, your own gestures, your own recital of gratitude for the gift of a each
brand new day of life.
AM NOT A MORNING PERSON
Or maybe you’re not a morning
person. Maybe your best friend in the morning is a snooze alarm. 10 more
minutes. Just give me 10 more minutes. And then it’s rush or crawl, but almost
unconsciously, trying to get to where you got to get, but reluctantly, every morning.
Living in a community with 15
other people, I get a good chance to see all kinds of different personality
types and how they react to the morning. Some avoid breakfast with others like
the plague. I usually arrive with six of seven others after common morning
prayers. I sense that some people see where we morning people sit and then they
sit as far away as possible. Their face seems to be saying, “Oh my God, shut
him up. Where is there a dark corner where I can sit and eat quietly?”
I used to be harsh in my judgment
of people who claimed that they do not function till after 10:30 A.M..
Hopefully, I’m getting to be a kinder and gentler person in my old age.
Yet, I still think that
“non-morning persons” are missing out on some of the best hours of the day. I
go by the old sayings: “The morning hours have their hands filled with gold.” “It’s the early bird that catches the
worm.”
I think people who constantly
burn their candle on both ends are crazy, but I too was young once. A young
friend of mine, Mary Jo, used to go dancing every night. Every morning on her
way to work she used to stop in for a cup of coffee in the place where I
worked. After hearing her tales from the night before, usually getting home on
weekday nights around 1:00 A.M., I’d say, “Mary Jo, how did you get out of the
bed this morning?” And she would always answer, “Slowly.”
Thinking about it, I’m not really
fair on “non-morning people”. I don’t allow people to be different, to have
different biological clocks than me. I’m self-centered. I block out that on
most afternoons I bottom out after lunch till about 2:00 o’clock. And then I
really don’t get energized till about 2:30. I’m a morning and a night person
and not an early afternoon person. I’m made for Italy or Spain where they have
the smart idea of a good siesta every afternoon.
MAKE MY ATTITUDE
What makes your day? What makes
an attitude?
I sense that one’s attitude makes
all the difference in the world whether one is happy or sad, positive or
negative, energized or drained. Going to bed at 9:00 P.M or 1:00 A.M. might
make a difference, but I think it’s deeper than that.
Some people use the word
“attitude” in the negative sense only. I think that the word “attitude” means
one’s basic outlook or way of looking at life. The dictionary says that
attitude means just that: one’s way of thinking, the way I lean, my basic
tendency, my inclination.
We know each other. We know our
each other’s inclinations and ways of thinking. We know the kind of atmosphere
that different people bring into whatever room enter. We know that people are
like the weather. Some people have a sunny, bright blue disposition and some
people are like dull, moody rainy days. When you are with Jane, you feel that
everything is bright and upbeat; when you are with Joan, you feel like you are
under a cloud and that she is dark and damp inside. She seems to be dwelling in
her cellar instead of relaxing on her back porch.
But that’s other people. I would
think that the reader of a magazine article is called upon to look at oneself.
Do I incline to be negative or positive? Am I an optimist or a pessimist?
What’s my weather report about myself? What kind of a person am I: warm and
sunny, or cold, frigid, and stormy? Am I a cool breeze or am I full of hot air?
Am I grateful or ungrateful?
GRATITUDE: ALL IS GIFT
I would think that a person who
has an attitude of gratitude is someone who sees that all is gift. Well, not
all the time, but most of the time. We all have our tides. We have our seasons.
We have our winters of discontent. But in general, I would think that a person
who has an attitude of gratitude is someone who would see life in a certain
way.
So I sat back and began to jot
down a description of a grateful person. The result is the following
Thanksgiving shopping list before the Christmas rush.
A grateful person is someone
whose basic weather pattern would be: all is gift, all is from God.
A grateful person is someone who
enjoys games with friends, likes to win, but doesn’t come apart if they lose at
bridge or “Uno” or chess or “Trivia Pursuit”.
A grateful person is someone who
loves zoos and cartoons, salad and desert, birds and flowers by name, and the
great variety of people one can see on the New York Subway or in Toronto or in
Disneyland.
A grateful person is someone who
stops to notice the scarlet, deep red or maroon color of cranberry sauce and
the fascinating yellow rows of corn on the cob before they eat it.
A grateful person is someone who
loves real mashed potatoes and turkey and cries tears of joy on Thanksgiving
when they see that night on television many homeless people also getting a
great Thanksgiving dinner because of volunteers. And they realize that they too
are being called to volunteer.
A grateful person is someone who
hasn’t got an over abundance of “have to’s” in their life.
A grateful person is someone who
doesn’t see in general, but sees specifics. They don’t see dogs and trees and
humans. They see this fluffy dog named “Polly” or that Japanese maple tree, the
one off to the side on the front lawn of the local library, and this old lady
next to them in church who is wheezing and they ask her how’s she doing at the
sign of peace.
A grateful person is someone who
can still enjoy ice cream as much as their grandchildren, when they take them
out for a day at the mall or the park.
A grateful person is someone
whose who isn’t a griper, a sniper, a nitpicker, a taker, a bumper, a sneak, a
back stabber, an alligator, or a pit bull.
A grateful person is someone who
enjoys the rye bread and doesn’t sit there whispering inwardly, “I should
have taken the pumpernickel.”
A grateful person is someone who
wakes up every morning or sometime in the day, wiggles their toes, and thanks
God for the gift of this new day of life with its many specific wonders.
Thank you for listening. Happy
Thanksgiving.
Andy Costello, CSSR
U.S. Catholic,
November 1991
