Posted by Gwyn MacDonald
We talk (and write) quite a bit about gratitude at Judy Moon and Associates. It’s a big part of Judy’s Lifeline technique practice and we have all been influenced and inspired by one of Lifeline’s major tenants, “Infinite Love and Gratitude”!
This past Christmas I gave my parents a book by Oliver Sacks called Gratitude. A few days after I bought the book I went to visit and it turns out they had gotten copies for my husband and a few friends and were excited to tell me about it! I did my best not to blurt out “I got you a copy too!” But that’s how books as gifts work in our family. Smile.
Both fans of Dr. Sacks’ work, my folks were deeply moved by this little book. And it is little, only seven and a half inches tall! It contains three essays that Sacks wrote as he neared the end of his life, one of them just weeks before he died. All of the essays were originally published in the New York Times where my parents and thousands of others read them. The response from readers was overwhelming, so many of them deeply moved by Sacks’ candid words.
Honest and crisp in their discussion of a life moving swiftly towards it’s end, yet at the same time celebratory and overflowing with pure joy for a life fully, blissfully and lovingly lived.
If you haven’t heard of Oliver Sacks, he was a neurologist and a prolific writer. Probably his most famous book, Awakenings, was made into a movie starring Robin Williams as the quirky doctor. Sacks worked with and wrote about some of the more unknown and frankly bizarre brain disorders that afflict people throughout the world and his passion for the recognition and well being of his patients was remarkable. His interest and compassion for the complexity of human nature and all of it’s frailties was what my parents and so many others love and respect about his work.
The past few years have been a bit of a roller coaster with serious health events in my own family and for some of my dearest friends. And while I don’t dwell on it, I have thought deeply about what it means when someone is at the end of their life. And these questions are often what come to mind. What is it that is truly important in one’s life? What brings us joy? Do the people we love know that we really love them? And why is it that for many of us we don’t look at or express those things until the very end?
I don’t have the answers of course, but for me this little book is a treasure because it reinforced (down to my toes!) what I am grateful for. The things that ground me, the small yet precious gems that give my life meaning and beauty. The people I love and share my life with. While the essays in Gratitude are very personal they resonate, I believe, with all of us. Small yet powerful reminders to live our lives deeply, to notice the tiny things, to do the things that bring us joy and to really love the ones we love.
I am always delighted and humbled when reminders like this one come along.
