Expressing Gratitude...

    By John Zakour

Last weekend one of our friends sent me a quote from Doctor David Steindi-Rast that read, “It’s not happiness that makes us grateful. It’s gratefulness that makes us happy.”  She asked if I believed that. And I replied, “Yes, absolutely gratitude is one of the basic tenets of happiness.” In fact, one of the best ways to increase your happiness is to express that gratitude to others. What better way to express it then once again in my column.

 

I am going to start with the obvious. I’m grateful to my family starting with my parents. Yeah, they weren’t perfect but, in many ways, they were perfect for me. Even when they gave me bad advice, “Take French.” They always meant well. Also grateful to my sister as I would have been even more spoiled if I was an only child. Yeah, my first years were great, but it was nice to have company. Sure, I wanted a dog or a brother, but life doesn’t always give you what you want. It teaches you to adapt and be flexible. I’m grateful to my wife and son for their support and encouragement and putting up with me all these years and all my “little” faults. (If you must know I am the world’s worst singer, yet I still occasionally sing without realizing it.) I tell everybody the secret to being a moderately successful writer is to have a spouse or a significant other who has a real job. Our dog Daisy also gets kudos for making me play with her outside even when I didn’t think I wanted to.

 

To all my friends old and new, big and small, republican and democrat and undecided. You make my life fun and interesting and a learning experience. Since I made a lot of my current friends playing softball, pickleball, ping pong, tennis and martial arts, I’m grateful for sports. Besides helping me be social, sports also help me stay strong(ish) and keep me in shape(ish). Plus running around hitting balls and punching bags is a great release.

 

Now this might seem weird, but I am grateful for Apple, Amazon and Google. Yes, they are monster companies and truly have the potential to become Doctor Who villains; yet I choose to concentrate on the positive things they do. If it wasn’t for Apple and their development of MacWrite I might not be a writer today. I guess I also must give Microsoft a little “well done” for Word. Google gives every person access to a wealth of knowledge (when you shift through the spam) plus google docs is a nice alternative to Word. Amazon for better or for worse has become the major factor in the publishing industry. I appreciate having all these books at my disposal. I certainly wouldn’t have over a hundred books available to everybody if it wasn’t for them. So, thanks, Apple, Google and Amazon, try not to be evil.

 

Finally, I’m grateful for living in a small town in the Finger Lakes. Is Geneva perfect? No of course not: taxes are high, I’m still not sure how downtown will look once all the construction is done and our city council sadly mirrors national politics in not being able to cooperate. Yet the lake is beautiful, you can get anywhere in ten minutes and the vast majority of the people are friendly and welcoming. So thanks, people of Geneva.

And now a cartoon. Speaking of being grateful for pets and parents. :)