On gratitude

No better way to cap off this Thanksgiving week than by offering one thought on gratitude. I don't have a top ten list of virtues, but if I did, gratitude might just be number one. Author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel said that a person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.

I don't know why he thought that. Perhaps it's because knowing what it takes to be grateful requires a certain sense humility and intelligence that only few really have (and that many don't really strive for).

Life can be so ordinary sometimes, so routine. Even the extraordinary seems to become routine after a while. The poison in that process makes us lose sight and perspective in so many ways. I think that's why most adults are cynical.

That is, except for those who admit failure, live humbly, make mistakes, ooze compassion, and know gratitude. For these people I am truly grateful, for your continued challenge to those of us who struggle being grateful, who forget to notice beauty, and who often think of life as linear - goals to be accomplished by this date, money to be made by this age, awards to be received for this project at this point - instead of life as an immersion in wonder.

As theologian and spiritual writer Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich."