GRATITUDE

Old Words to Express a New Affirmation

“Gratitude opens the door to the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe” — Deepak Chopra.

How I found my New Year’s resolution

Yesterday evening when I got home from the grocery store, my purse felt strangely light. It could mean only one thing. My phone — the only heavy object in my purse — was missing.

I emptied my purse. Scrabbled through the groceries. Checked my car.

Zilch. Nada. Nothing.

I was traveling the following day. I needed my phone.

Don’t panic. Think.

I retraced my steps. . . .

I was walking with my grocery cart to the car. Chatting on the phone with my niece. The groceries had made it into the car — my phone had not.

A picture flashed before my eyes —

I jumped into the car and drove to the store fifteen miles over the speed limit.

It was around 9 pm on a Sunday. There were a handful of people in the parking lot. I pulled up next to the station where I had dropped off my shopping cart less than thirty minutes back. There had been a dozen carts in the station then.

Now there was only one.

I wrenched open the car door and almost fell out. Please, God, please!

I made out a rectangular silhouette on the child seat of the cart. My breath exited in a whoosh —

I had found my phone.

I looked up into the luminous dome of the sky. At the sprinkling of stars around a gibbous moon. Thank you!

And that’s how I arrived at my New Year’s resolution —

I resolve to begin and end every day with an affirmation of gratitude to the Universe.

Why wait for Jan 1 —

I had never before tried daily affirmations of gratitude. But now I asked myself, Why wait until next year? Why not begin tonight?

So before getting into bed, I closed my eyes. Thank you, God, for my family, friends, my home, uh. . . and. . . .

My prayer ground to a halt. The words felt stilted. They clattered in my mouth instead of rolling off my tongue.

But, hey, I am a writer.

I would draft a prayer and polish it until the words gleamed. Then I could thank the Universe decorously. Effusively. Poetically.

When I opened my eyes this morning, I didn’t have my gratitude script written yet. I would have to wing it.

I sat on the edge of my bed and closed my eyes. Suddenly, I was murmuring the words of a hymn I had learned as a child — Deva, amhi baala. . . (“My Lord, we are children”).

It was a hymn my brother and I sang every evening before dinner when our mother lit the lamp at the family altar. It asked the Almighty to protect us. To bless us with knowledge and wisdom.

It was not really a hymn of gratitude. It was a song of praise, but there was nothing ornate about it. The tone and wording were those of a child — and as humble and unpretentious as the sentiment of gratitude.

The hymn took me back to my childhood home, to my roots. It was an old part of me — in the way a new and rigorously edited script could never be.

So, I will not write a gratitude script.

Instead, I will thank the Universe with a script written by an unknown poet over a century ago. I will thank the Universe with the sentiment of gratitude rather than words.

Teaching kids about sharing and the environment:

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