50 Days 'Til 50 Day 34--Thank You Notes

50 Days ‘Til 50Day 34Thank You NotesAs the big ‘50’ birthday celebrations have now come to a close, the calls and messages have returned to normal status, and the last gifts have been opened its time to write my thank you notes. Shuffling around through my desk drawer to find some of these cards got me thinking about my ‘thank you’s”, my acknowledgement to all who took the time to think of me and celebrate with me, and what these thank you notes truly represent for me; and that is gratitude. My Facebook page has not only been jammed up lately with the ALS ice bucket challenge (which I was challenged to take today, and did)but another challenge seeming to be this weeks on trend share, the gratitude list. I'm not sure where it started but these lists are not foreign to me. Throughout my years I’ve written many of these lists from time to time and find them to be amazingly simple to write once I just remember to do it. I have always received huge personal dividends from doing them as well, so I wanted to dig in a bit deeper and see why I don’t do these lists all the time. For those of you who read my “Lists” blog way back that may explain a little of it, but this is different.I have written before about how my sister and I were raised in my parent’s hotel. If there was one thing our parents drilled into us from the start it was a sense of graciousness and good manners. “Yes Sir.” “No Ma’am.” “Thank you Mister Smith.” “You’re welcome Mrs. Stone.” This was our norm as we were always being introduced to their friends and hotel guests at every turn. We learned to be gracious in all things before we even knew what the word meant. Even our closest family members, especially our elders were always revered with the utmost of respect and kindness. I don’t know if flapping my grandmothers’ underarm fat when I sat in their laps was the kind of respect my parents were talking about, but I was a work in progress lets just say.   I was fascinated by this odd ritual with them and lets just say they were good sports about it. I'm less fascinated with it now that I'm 50 and have noticed a bit of that flab here now on myself. Ahhh…growing old. I also learned very young what sort of repercussions came from my actions when I disrespected people. Teachers aren’t very smitten with you, especially as a first grader when you call them a bitch. I don’t even know where I had heard this word before but decided to take a spin on her with it, my first grade teacher, Miss Goodhead (for real). As I was torn from my seat and dragged to the back of the room where the communal bar of soap ended up in my mouth, I never called her that again. Another time a few years older I guess I had forgotten the soap lesson and took it out on a female classmate, again using the same word, in which she turned around and at the top of her lungs for the entire school to hear screamed, “don’t EVER call me that again.” I never did.Over the years, I wasn’t the kid that you’d associate the word gratitude with. At Christmas time, after opening more gifts than one child should ever receive, I’d be looking for even more gifts. I’d be looking for that one thing I thought I needed and didn’t acquire and would sulk in the corner because I didn’t get it. On my sister and my respective birthdays, we would give each other an “unbirthday” gift. This was so we didn’t feel like we were being left out while the other was lavished with gifts and a cake. We would each receive a small token gift to keep us quiet and sated. I was never sated and would wait and wait for that one little gift completely missing out on her birthday experience altogether. A spoiled child? Maybe. An entitled child? Apparently. I'm certain my parents were convinced they had created a monster. As I have written before of my fear of being without, of being left behind, of just being left alone, I would grab and cling onto these things like they were gold and hold them close to me, so no one could take them away from me. They gave me some sort of a false sense of security. So whenever a gift was given to me throughout the year I would then have to sit down and pen out a card to these people proclaiming my gratitude to them for the gifts received. By this point I had usually lost interest in the gift, or had already spent the monetary gift on something frivolous but at the stern watch of my Mom would always get those cards out. I couldn’t grab the concept of true gratitude. To be thankful for what I had and not longing for what I didn’t. Until the day I did.My father passed away when I was just 11. My mom held onto the hotel as long as she could but it was too much for her to handle on her own especially with a 7 and an 11 year old. We moved and the life I had known and came to expect took a complete 180-degree turn. My mom had to go to work full time and my sister and I had to do some growing up and some growing up fast. We became latch key kids, letting ourselves in our house after school and making our own snacks and sometimes dinner if my mom had to work late. We whittled Christmas down to several gifts each compared to my obscene hauls of years passed. Birthdays were the same, and although always celebrated, they became much more about the fact that we were all together and healthy and happy then about the number of gifts we had. We would now shop in second hand clothing stores just to have something that was “new” to us. Something deeply internal started to happen to me during this time. I know now what it was. I was experiencing a bit of humility. Not much, but a little. True humility I have learned produces one of the best effects in me and that was this sincere gratitude I had been so lacking of. Although I was still very selfish and self-centered I started having some gratitude. A little bit at a time, slowly by slowly I was starting to be grateful for what I had and not wasting time on what I didn’t have or even better yet, what I thought I should have. It probably started with the most obvious stuff. I was grateful to see a hummingbird in the garden while having my morning coffee. I would be grateful for the bed I had to sleep in, the roof over my head, the food in my fridge and that I even had a fridge. When I bought my first house I grimaced that it didn’t have a dishwasher. My thoughts were how could I have this house with no dishwasher? What would people think? So I bought a dishwasher immediately. Do you know this damn machine sat in the garage, in its box until the day came when I sold the house? I never even installed it. I would wash the dishes by hand each day and night knowing full well this machine I thought was so attached to my happiness and my status sat, collecting rust in the garage.I always thought “he with the most toys wins.” You work hard, you play hard, and you get stuff. My gratitude came from what I had materially. If I had the house I was grateful. If I had the nice car I was grateful. I knew however that this thinking wasn’t going to take me very far because I was never happy. I was that child again always looking behind the sofa for that next birthday gift. I would be envious of those that had more toys than I did and completely walk over those that had less. As I said I'm a work in progress. I’ve learned that gratitude is an action step. I can’t just think I'm grateful but I have to act as if I am. Act as if. Until I am. I have to make a conscious selfless effort to keep myself in a state of gratitude. When I accomplish this successfully great things come to pass for me. I’ve learned whatever I put ahead of my true self, will make me its slave. Whatever I cling to for that false sense of security whether it’s a person, place, or thing I am surely setting myself up to lose it. I know this to be true because I’ve done it. For it’s in these times of loss is when I learn my most valuable life lessons. I learn to be more humble and I learn the true meaning of gratitude.When I make the effort to write my gratitude list it lifts me up and away from the material world we all get distracted by. My relationships with people and friends are better because I don’t have any hidden agendas. I’ve now learned that the best gifts are the ones you give, without expecting anything in return. I now believe respect and gratitude go hand in hand. I cant proclaim I’m living in a state of gratitude and then go out and cut people off in traffic or make snide comments to the woman standing in the express check out line with more than ten items in her basket. I’ve been stripped down many times in this now 50 years. Stripped down bare. I’ve also had stuff  at times and at times I’ve had no stuff. When you’ve been stripped down to the bare bones it's easy to get very grateful, very quickly. To maintain this gratitude takes work, but its not hard work. I just need to remind myself each day of what I do have. A roof over my head. A partner that loves me, and that I love. Family that loves me and that I love and adore through all our differences. Friends that love and accept me which in turn only allows me to do the same with them. A job. Something that not only feeds my creative appetite but that I can sustain myself financially from. My health. My dogs. My ability to sit here and right this blog on my computer. Its not the shiny brand spanking new MAC book that I sometimes think it should be but it gets the job done just fine. Grateful that I have the eyes to see to write this with. When I do make these lists its amazing what a shift happens in me. I no longer have that feeling of lack. I know longer care if you have something that I don’t. I become less judgmental. I become more compassionate. I become more honest and real.   Gratitude makes me nicer, more trusting, more social, and more appreciative. As a result, it helps me make more friends, deepen my existing relationships, and improve my relationship with my partner. It makes me more optimistic and more hope-filled. It helps me to relax.I find it amusing in this life how I can turn one of my greatest character defects into one of my most valuable virtues. Gratitude is no cure-all, but I think it’s a massively underutilized tool. For if I don’t feel grateful for what I already have, what makes me think I’d be happy with more?jf