But Nancy recounted a time when her three children were very young, she was in a tough situation, and I flew down from New York to see how I could help.
“I really appreciated that. So many other things got in the way afterwards, but I knew that day you really cared,” she said.
I put my arm around my sister and gave her a hug. Holding on to memories like the night-of-the-music-box or the day-of-flying-down gave us something to appreciate again. Gratitude might not make us into the Olsen twins, but it reminded each of us that we had a sister to count on. With that as the new basis for sisterhood, we could move forward.
We went back to Nancy’s pretty house and for dinner, we made a feast of the kale and quinoa she cooks and keeps fresh in her fridge. We kept talking and talking, and at a little before midnight, we decided to celebrate. Neither of us drinks much, so Nancy pulled out a bowl of chocolate-covered ginger (we couldn’t eat healthily forever), and we lifted our chocolate and toasted being sisters.
Nancy, who did not cry easily, admitted that thinking about our new friendship brought tears to her eyes. I dabbed at my eyes with a tissue and admitted that I felt exactly the same.
“Though it may be your cat making me cry. You do know I’m allergic, right?” I asked.
Nancy laughed and stroked Toby, more the size of a bobcat than a house pet. I liked dogs and Nancy liked cats. But with all the goodwill suddenly flowing between us, we could work it out.
—
The next day, when I got home, I stayed quieter than usual. Ron asked what was wrong, and I told him about my concern that I hadn’t made a big enough impact this year. I needed the grand gesture that would make my gratitude forever meaningful. He looked at me in amazement.
“You’re joking, right?”
“No, not at all.”
“Okay, let’s think it through. You made our marriage better, reconciled with your sister, got a new view of your career, and encouraged our kids. And by the way, you wrote a book so that other people can do the same thing. Isn’t that enough for you?”
My old instinct was to say “Not enough!” but I caught the fierce look in Ron’s eyes and smiled. The philosopher Epictetus had been my guide through parts of this year and he spent a lot of time discussing how we can be most content if we focus on what is in our power. Anxiety comes from wanting what we can’t control. He gave the example of a lute player who is happy when playing and singing to himself—but gets anxious when he goes on stage for he not only wishes to sing well, but also to obtain applause: but this is not in his power. In modern terms, that meant not driving yourself crazy about the things you couldn’t control or hadn’t yet accomplished.
“I think what I’ve done better be enough for now,” I told Ron with a smile.
I had started the year making myself (and him) unhappy by looking only at what I lacked. After this year, I understood that coming from a position of gratitude, you could still want (and get) more for yourself, your family, your career, or the world. But you enjoyed more along the way. No road led right to the top and some didn’t get there at all, but gratitude at least let you take the scenic route.
Living gratefully had started out as a lark, and once I decided to write a book, the yearlong project could have slipped into being just a literary device. But as the year went on, the project had lodged deeper and deeper into my heart and soul. I wasn’t just reporting—I was also feeling. Something changed in me. Gratitude affected how I looked at every event that happened. Being positive and looking for the good had become second nature—and that made me much happier. I still got into the occasional bad mood, but I snapped out of it quickly. My much-appreciated children called regularly and stopped by often. Ron and I spent a lot of time sitting at dinner together talking about how lucky we were to have each other. In fact, we weren’t any more blessed than we had ever been—we just noticed it more. And the noticing made us closer and happier.
I thought about grand gestures for a couple of days, and that weekend at our country house, I went out for a long walk by the river. There had been an early snowfall and the trees glistened with lacy patterns of ice and snow. Underfoot, the snow was soft and crunchy, melted enough for easy walking, but not yet wet slush. I paused to notice how beautiful the woods appeared, the elegant simplicity of the stark winter trees against the pale blue sky. But then I let my mind wander. I pondered Henry Timms’s suggestion that I needed some dazzling finale for my year, and I thought about going to Nicaragua to build houses for the poor.
Final scene: Janice with a hammer and nails!
But no, that wasn’t me.
I admired the people who expressed gratitude with grand gestures, but my expressions, smaller and more personal, made their own kind of impact. My positivity this year had touched others, and maybe each of those people had found some peace and satisfaction that they could pass along too. I hadn’t changed my essential nature to be more grateful, but none of us really needed to do that (nor can we, I suspect). Instead, I’d recentered and refocused. Maybe I was 40 percent more positive and 50 percent more grateful, and that in itself was dramatic and life changing.
From a high point on the mostly flat trail, I looked out at the river, clearly visible through the bare trees. I realized that this year I had started noticing the details of life and nature in a different way—sunrises and sunsets, rushing rivers, the warmth of the sun on my face and the prickling briskness of the wind on my back. I even smiled to think about the dog I’d heard barking during my sister’s meditation class. I had made myself stop often to be grateful for every sensation, and now it came naturally, the simplest pleasure of simply being alive in a vibrant world.
Heading back home, I stopped at the small cemetery just outside the center of town and walked among the old-fashioned headstones tilting in the mild afternoon sun. Slim pieces of stone with simple inscriptions from the late 1800s carried names like Ebenezer Eaton and Rebecca Alcott and George Bull and Edwidge Stone. I tried to imagine the lives of the solid New Englanders who had died at fifty-two and sixty, a full life back then, or lost a child at eighteen days or three years. One man lived a fuller life: “72 years, 7 months, and 28 days,” the inscription said. I thought how he must have appreciated every moment on earth to count each day. Or maybe it was only after his death that a relative thought to cherish those days and be thankful for every one of them.
Wandering among the stones, I felt like I’d stepped into act 3 of Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town. Many of the townspeople have died, but they remain onstage, sitting in chairs that represent their places in the cemetery. The play’s young heroine, Emily, has died in childbirth, and she is stunned to find herself among the dead. She asks for the chance to return to earth for one day. Just one day! While warned not to, she decides to go back and experience again her twelfth birthday.
Our Town is always performed without props—“no curtain, no scenery,” Wilder wrote in his stage directions—and the characters mime the action of setting a table or shucking peas. (It makes it a perfect play for schools—not a lot of extra stage expenses.) But when I saw a production at a downtown theater in New York, the director made the last scene, the day Emily returned to relive her twelfth birthday, come to vivid, sensory life. As Emily’s mother cooked breakfast in the kitchen, real plates clattered and freshly cooking bacon crackled on the (working) stove, its rich aroma wafting through the audience. Her mom barely noticed her as she rushed to get the meal on the table, and the ghostly Emily understood that all the colors and smells and sounds—so incredibly appealing now—had meant nothing to her and her family when they actually lived the day.
“Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you,” Emily says.
Horrified at how careless we are about savoring our time on earth, she asks to go back to the cemetery. It is too painful to see people ignoring the world and not appreciating our fleeting moments of life. I saw that downtown
production on three occasions, and each time, tears rolled down my cheeks when Emily discovered how foolish and oblivious we all are, how we don’t know to be grateful for the simple gifts of life and love and cooking bacon.
Can we stop and revel in the moments of daily life, or will we only regret when they have been lost? I had too often let the wonders of life be an unseen background, and now, before it was too late, I wanted them center stage. My year of living gratefully had changed me in so many ways, but mostly it had given me the simple ability to experience joy for almost any reason. I now knew to appreciate this moment and the next one, to truly feel the warm hugs of my children and the love of my husband. To be grateful for the ice on the trees and my footprints in the snow. They will not be here forever. Neither will I. But that doesn’t matter. This moment does.
Epilogue
New Year’s Eve . . . Again
So grateful for what I’ve learned since last New Year’s
Happy that gratitude changed an ordinary year into the best one ever
Eager to buy my gratitude journal . . . for next year
As the December days got darker and New Year’s approached, I realized that I didn’t want my year of living gratefully to end. In terms of events, nothing special had happened since the party I’d attended last year, when I made my plan at midnight. I was married to the same person, living in the same place, busy with the same career. The fantasies I’d had a year ago of winning the lottery or moving to Maui hadn’t materialized. But my instinct last New Year’s that it wouldn’t be the events that defined my year but my response to them had been right.
By living gratefully, I’d had the happiest twelve months I could remember.
Ron also marveled at how much fun we’d had this year doing nothing in particular. Being grateful and appreciating each other had bonded us more closely than ever.
We got to put our good spirits to the test on a Monday morning as we drove down from our weekend house. A freezing rain had caused a mess on the highway, and the eighty minutes to Ron’s office stretched to more than two hours. As we sat in unmoving traffic, Ron knew patients would be gathering in his waiting room, and I texted an editor that I’d miss our meeting. The time kept ticking. We could feel bad for ourselves, or . . .
“I know it looks like a bad day, but want to think of reasons to be grateful?” I asked.
“You start,” said Ron, gripping the wheel.
“I’m grateful that my husband put on a nice cologne this morning. It’s making it much nicer to be trapped in the car.”
He smiled and seemed to relax a little. “Grateful that I won’t get a speeding ticket today.”
“And I’m grateful you don’t need gas.”
“Oh, I do,” he said, glancing at his dashboard. “But I’m grateful the red light isn’t on so you don’t know it.”
We both laughed. We’d had enough practice this year being positive and playful that we fell into it easily now. We definitely knew the negatives of being stuck in traffic, but our bright-side banter saved us from frustration.
When we finally arrived, I leaned over and gave Ron a hug.
“We made it. Nobody got hurt. No accidents in the bad weather. I appreciate that you got me here safely.”
“Thanks for your good attitude. That’s what made this year so special,” he said.
As I got out of the car and put up my umbrella, I realized that not long ago, the same drive would have been unbearably tense. I would have been second-guessing (we should have left earlier . . . why do we stay until Monday morning anyway?) and Ron anxious. Now I understood that we can do our darnedest to make events go the way we want—but sometimes they just won’t. Gratitude had given me a way of viewing the good or bad through a different lens.
Even after this year, I would never sign on to the idea that everything happens for the best. The tragic, sad, unexpected, and irritating do take place, and our lives are not necessarily better for them. But our only choice is how to respond. Instead of being masterful at misery, we can become experts at gratitude. After a year of focusing on the bright side, I knew it was a lot more satisfying to be grateful than wrapped up in your own pain.
At the beginning of the year, the marriage and family therapist Dr. Brian Atkinson had told me that “the relentless pursuit of positivity” could change my neural pathways and rewire automatic responses. A whole slew of studies showed that taking the time to have loving, giving, and grateful feelings could change how your brain functioned in emotion-related areas. I didn’t have a brain scan to prove it, but my mind definitely made different connections now.
My friends who had been hearing me talk (and talk) about gratitude all year were starting to see results themselves. My dear friend Susan continued to work on huge business deals, and her relentless, hard-driving style hadn’t changed (thank goodness). But she called me after a family vacation, and before bothering to say “hello,” she blurted, “You were right about gratitude making marriage work. Why did it take us this long to figure it out?”
Susan had spent the vacation appreciating her husband—and she suddenly felt differently toward the man she’d been married to for ages. “You know what I realized? It takes a certain amount of confidence to appreciate what you have. It’s much easier to always wonder what you’re missing.”
She told me that her husband was a smart cookie, he had her back, and she could fully trust him. “I’m grateful for that. I wish I’d focused on it earlier.”
I told her that second-guessing wasn’t allowed. It didn’t matter where you’d been—only where you now planned to go.
—
Shortly after our Monday morning drive, I reminded Ron that the upcoming New Year’s Eve would be the last official night of my year of living gratefully. It would be my chance to think about what had changed since last year. Was life better? Had my plan worked? Was I happier this New Year’s than last?
“No pressure to make it a perfect night,” I said, teasing.
“I don’t feel any,” he assured me. “But where should we celebrate?” He suggested going to the opera or a concert, dancing at the Rainbow Room or running the midnight race in Central Park. I shook my head, so he tried again. A downtown nightclub? A party in the city with friends?
“I just want to be with you. In the country, by the fireplace, with a bottle of champagne.”
“I’ll get Veuve Clicquot,” he offered expansively, mentioning the expensive champagne I usually liked.
“Ten-buck prosecco is fine,” I said. Since I’d learned that it was experiences, not stuff, that made us grateful, the brand of bubbles wasn’t going to matter.
Ron had to work the last day of December, and our children were traveling, but I took out my best china and went to the grocery store with a lightness in my step. I felt a certain expectancy in the air, and I realized that big changes can happen when the calendar flips—but only if you make them. By paying attention, thinking positively, and reframing experiences, I had put myself in a different place this year than last. I had become the happier person I wanted to be.
I made a simple dinner of grilled salmon and asparagus, and we ate by the light of the crystal candlesticks our children had bought as a present for the holidays. Ron made a crackling fire and we cuddled on the couch with tea and dessert. (My favorite chocolate cookies, approved by the Amazing Gratitude Diet.) After a while, we turned on the movie Magic in the Moonlight, with dapper Colin Firth and charming Emma Stone. By the end, the science-minded Firth character has given up his grumbly ways, found optimism, and come to believe that the world has some kind of magic.
As the final credits rolled, I buried my head in Ron’s shoulder and started to cry.
“Come on, the movie wasn’t that good,” Ron said, stroking my hair.
“I know, but it reminded me of this whole year. I also found the magic. Last year, I couldn’t wait for the
ball to drop. Now I’m dreading it because I don’t want this year of gratitude to end.”
“You can keep being grateful next year,” Ron offered.
“I want to be more grateful,” I said fiercely.
At a couple of minutes before midnight, Ron flipped the TV to New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. I pictured myself standing at the party a year ago (much better dressed) watching the same show. Then I had been dreary and world-weary, wondering what I could possibly do to make myself happier twelve months hence.
Well, I’d found out. Gratitude had transformed an ordinary year into a glorious one. Everyone watching the revelry in Times Square tonight wondered what the New Year would bring. I wanted to tell them that they didn’t have to wonder—they could decide for themselves. Bring the right mood and spirit to each day and you can create the best year of your life. Now that’s a real reason to shout in excitement at midnight.
Gratitude had changed me, and I suddenly had an image that gratitude could also transform the whole world. However dismal global events may be, looking for the bright spots allows us to survive and move on. Gratitude spreads quickly to other people. Charles Darwin believed that the societies with the most compassion are the best able to flourish. Acts of kindness are noticed, reciprocated, passed forward. If we put good into the world, maybe, just maybe, it starts to be returned.
As the countdown reached five seconds, I wiped away another tear. I wanted to stop the clock and hold on to all the goodness of this year.
But time doesn’t stop. Moments pass quickly and so do years. The biggest regret most of us have in looking back is thinking of all the time wasted being unhappy or angry. I couldn’t promise that I had fully embraced each of the 31,536,000 seconds of this year. But I’d filled as many as possible with gratitude. I hadn’t completed every page of my gratitude journal, but I would buy a new one now and keep it by my side. Gratitude was ingrained in me, but we all need reminders.
The Gratitude Diaries Page 25