Gratitude to Change the World

A park service employee was busy swishing out the toilets.

I said, “thank you so much for doing this.”

“Wow, no one ever says that to me”, he said.

“I appreciate what a good job you are doing, really. When I came here the first night, it was pouring rain, there were tracks of mud and pine needles all over the bathroom floor. And then I came in the next morning and everything was cleaned and free of dirt. It made such a difference, thank you.”

The employee said, “no one knows what we do here and what we have to deal with. We have over 300 campsites here! Thank you for saying something to me.”

The man was visibly uplifted. And so was I.

Expressing gratitude to those around us can be very easy. There are many people that have helped you and me get to where we are now: from school teachers of long ago, the gas station attendant, the grocery clerk, the crossing guards, the janitors, the groundskeepers of parks, police, and many more dedicated to serving others, there are countless beings that have contributed to where we are, seen and unseen.

I am a deep believer in an Almighty Great Spirit, of seen and unseen forces that unifies us all. I do not know how to translate it other than to say that it is a unified field of love that can be directly experienced. For many people, this can be experienced through a medium like prayer, an organized body or tradition, a teacher, or some spiritual practice. It does not matter the tradition as we are all called to that which resonates most with the frequency we operate at. What matters is that we are all being called right now to express this unified field in our own way, and to offer it to others.

Part of this offering can happen through gratitude. It does not matter your tradition or faith. It only matters the offering and the giving of it directly as an expression of the heart. You may have your judgements, your “anger”, your “not feeling it”, but truly the attitude of gratitude offered to those around you can save the world.

Being grateful and outwardly expressing it is a very small, painless way of letting people know they are being seen and heard. There is no amount of money you can pay someone to do a great job, but you can love someone enough in one moment to change their lives forever.

We are constantly being given moments to make a choice on how we help and be with others. And this choice directly effects the larger world around us. Our words do matter. And how we say them as well.

So while you may not believe in the “seen and unseen forces”, God or an Almighty Great Spirit, there is one common value that we share: to love and be loved. Let us come together and be grateful to those that give us so much.

Namaste.