The Season of Gratitude

12/1/14 The Season of Gratitude

 

We call the time around Thanksgiving and through the New Year “The Holidays.” Personally, I am glad that we start our holiday festivities with Thanksgiving of the bounty of the year’s labor and we end them looking forward to a new year. Without commenting on any of the less savory aspects of the origin of the Thanksgiving feast, I am thinking more about the symbolism it can have for us today. As I think about the spirits of thanksgiving and gratitude, I am struck that they are grounded in the present and the future, not in the past.  As Neal A. Maxwell said, “We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count.” Certainly, in being thankful, we are thinking of the conditions that took place (past tense) but we are expressing thanks in real-time today and creating a condition of the mind that is moving us into the future at that very second.

 

Living in the nation we do, in the age we do, with the jobs and health insurance we have, surrounded by people who care for us, with the resources we have at our fingertips, we have many reasons to be thankful. Maybe our challenge is to be thankful at this specific moment, and to move forward living gratefully by intentionally becoming a blessing to someone else. I can think of no better or no more future focused way of living because we know that making a difference for others pays dividends into the future. Cicero summarized it well, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”  Will our choice to live gratefully have a serious impact on the future? It certainly can’t hurt.

Administrative Office Professionals Day Poem 2013

You’ve found amazing successes

despite your supervisors’ best efforts and guesses.

You offer our customers consistent smiles

though you’re buried in work measured in miles.

You are the yin of organizational order

to our yang full of disorganizational disorder.

You are constantly, amazingly, expertly juggling multiple hats,

so allow me a moment to recognize you truly as “all that”.

You are composed and compassionate

even in the face of customer frustration or discontent.

You are time management and reality’s anchor

when my feet and mind are wont to wander.

You have a selfless service gift given

when my contribution is generally but to enliven.

You’ll, at the counter, save the day

while I’m in meetings wasting away.

You’re the front-line Lieutenant

while I’m stuck debating “ands” in the Senate.

You’re the information and knowledge keeper,

but your work sits there while all glean as hungry info reapers.

Your customer help leaves folks better and different.

The reach of your impact is literally infinite.

Despite dealing with poop that lands down on you from uphill rolled,

it’s unfortunate we allow all our appreciation to sit so vastly untold.

In expertly handing all things most vital, left undone and tough,

we can never say thank you enough.

Your professionalism is truly inspirational.

Without you this place would scarcely be operational.

Daniel Segura, 4/24/13