It was in 1965, at a Thanksgiving Day dinner in the meditation room of the United Nations building, that the idea of World Gratitude Day first came into being. Spiritual and meditation leader Sri Chinmoy suggested there be a day of thanks that the whole world could celebrate together. Those present at the meeting pledged that each year on September 21 they would hold a celebration of gratitude in their country. We did so last month.
It is a day that has become something of a phenomenon, particularly in America, with people writing gratitude diaries and using gratitude apps. The idea seems to be that if we are grateful for our jobs, friends, and pets, we will live lives — to quote the author and entrepreneur Arianna Huffington — “protected from cynicism, entitlement, anger, and resignation”.
This has been a challenging year. My brother, Pete, at only 73, died of undiagnosed cancer. That was February. Then merely four weeks ago, Katherine — with little by way of classic symptoms — was sent for a colonoscopy to find an explanation for her chronic tiredness. No one tells you about how this bad stuff happens. But there you are, 12 of you gathered in a pleasant room, the afternoon shift, bathed in sunlight, clenching. Then three by three you're called in for the procedure. Most patients, relieved at their results, lightly leave the room. Except you. Then the surgeon, a trustworthy fellow with a gentleness born of breaking sad news, tells you in basic, empathetic, but plain language: you have a large growth blocking your bowel, it is mature, it is stage 3 cancer, and urgent surgery is needed — so it begins.
In her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bonnie Ware, an Australian palliative nurse, recorded (with permission) some of the intimate conversations shared with those for whom she cared as they came towards the end of their lives. And she found that a remarkable number of people had the same fundamental regret: namely, that they didn’t embrace the preciousness of life and connection while there was still time. They lived, to use that hackneyed expression, as if life were a dress rehearsal.
I don’t always agree with Dawkins, but these are, I think, his truest and most profound words from his book Unweaving the Rainbow:
“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly, those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton ... In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
We were raised in a poor, large Irish Catholic family. It didn't define us, but it shaped our gratitude for life. We often gathered as a family, joined by waifs and strays, whether it be for dinner, the rosary, or around Nana Rose’s piano where ballads old and new were belted out and her homemade gin flowed. When I recalled this at my brother’s funeral in July, my most vivid memory was that Pete easily connected with so many, and not just family but he forged genuine relationships across differences that are his lasting legacy.
For all the emotional pain associated with my brother’s death and the current challenges our family faces as we support Katherine in her chemical battle against a spreading cancer, rather than spending my waking hours irritated that Pete didn’t live longer, or at Katherine’s hard road ahead, I am struck by a different thought. I am grateful for life.
Instead of directing our gratitude to stuff — material and non-material — that furnishes our life, I wonder if we would do better to reflect upon the miracle on which these things are constructed: the fact of existence itself. To be alive when we might have never lived.
And in that life to have the privilege of connection. Gratitude helps, so does a plan, and hope, and most of all the kindness of others. We are so grateful to you.
Kia kaha
Arohanui
Gerard