Gratitude

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."-Albert Schweitzer

A friend recently posted about Thanksgiving and it got me thinking about gratitude. What does it mean to me? In my humble opinion, gratitude is the state or feeling of being thankful for some action or some person. Occasionally, the sense of indebtedness accompanies the feeling of thankfulness but I am not addressing that feeling here. I am discussing the pure feeling of being thankful, being happy and content. The last year has been difficult and challenging for numerous reasons, and not all adoption related. During this time I have been surrounded by several individuals, family and friends, who have unselfishly offered their sense of humor, companionship, and wisdom to me. They offered small acts of kindness or they were gentle in their approach. Sometimes, the greatest gift they gave was to accept and understand that things were tough. No questions asked and no response from me required. I guess they saw that the light in me was dim and did what they could to fan the flame. For this, I say thank you.

When looking up gratitude on Wikipedia, the excerpt adds, "From a Buddhist point of view, the Pali word which we translate in English as gratitude is katannuta. The word katannuta consists of two parts: kata which means that which has been done, especially that which has been done to one, to oneself, and annuta which means knowing or recognising. So katannuta means knowing or recognizing what has been done to one, that is to say knowing and recognising what has been done to one for one's benefit. Hence the connotation of the Pali word is rather different from its English equivalent. The connotation of the English gratitude is rather more emotional (we feel gratitude, feel grateful, etc.) but the connotation of katannuta is rather more intellectual, more cognitive. It makes it clear that what we call gratitude involves an element of knowledge - knowledge of what has been done to us or for us for our benefit. If we do not know that something has benefited us, we will not feel gratitude."

I know and acknowledge what has been thoughtfully done for me. I know I have benefited from these acts of kindness. There is a quote by Buddha that says, "Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful." Isn't that funny? So, I guess I have another day! I am filled with gratitude.