#GratitudeGRAVY day 11
Several years ago, I was at a yoga retreat and one of my favorite teachers Patty Zimmer, said grace before we ate a meal together.
I'm not a very religious person, so saying grace isn't always in my repertoire.
Patty thanked everyone who made the meal happen, thanked the food delivery truck drivers, the cashiers at the store, the farmers who grew the food. She thanked as many as she could think of whose hands made the meal possible, not just the almighty ones or the ones in the kitchen.
I loved this practice and adopted it as my own. It’s a beautiful way of being grateful and full of grace.
Then, I stumbled upon a crazy gratitude story that took this one (or 1000) steps further.
A NYC-based writer named A.J. Jacobs was doing a similar practice with his kids. He said he’d been in a bad mood for a while and thought the practice would cheer him up, while also teaching the kids about the power of gratitude. So, as a family, they thanked all the hands that went into their nightly dinner.
One night, one of his kids precociously brought up the fact that there was a flaw in this system. None of those people (the food delivery truck driver, the cashier at the grocery store, the farmer) could HEAR them say thank you and shouldn’t they actually let the people know how thankful they were?
A.J.decided to turn his kid’s comment into a quest--->the gratitude trail
He picked his morning cup of coffee as the top of what he calls the gratitude trail. Then he pledged to thank every single person who had a role in making his morning coffee possible (more gratitude for coffee ;-). |
We’re talking the barista, the cup makers, the South American farmer, the people who picked the beans, the truck drivers, the people who paved the road, the roasters, the warehouse managers and on and on down the chain. He said it was like making hundreds of reverse prank calls. He’d drop in on some unsuspecting warehouse person in a different country to thank them for making the paper that made the cup for his morning coffee in America and they, understandably, thought it was a prank.
This doesn’t need to be a 7-hour gratitude filibuster or a journey around the world, just a way to extend your gratitude out a few circles and acknowledge that so many diverse and wonderful people contributed to the bounty at your buffet. We are more connected than we realize.
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