Learning To Be Grateful

The other day, in the germ-free hospital playroom (super cleaned for the toddlers/kids going through chemotherapy), I was chatting with the mother of an 18-month-old boy with leukemia. As she was holding onto her son's hand, helping him practice his walking, making sure he didn't trip over the IV/med tubes & wires, she said, "But you know, it could be so, so much worse. Like look where we are."

And we looked around at the room full of regularly sterilized toys and up at the glass ceiling that let the sunshine beam down for the kids to bask in, and nodded in mutual understanding.

Her gratitude struck a chord.

Later that night, bored, with Gabrielle sleeping on my chest, I surfed the net looking for videos on gratitude. Nothing anyone said seemed to capture what I was looking for better than the video below.

Maybe it's how real this song is,

Or how lacking gratitude is in our culture,

Or how lacking beautiful songs of gratitude are in our culture,

Or, heck, how lacking people singing anything in chorus is in our culture,

The children's thank you for a bunch of new shoes just seemed so real and authentic,

Honest, heart-felt, and true.

And it reminds me of how lucky we all are,

And how regularly unappreciative we all are.

And how much we can learn about gratitude from those who have so much less than we do.