Shanah Tovah…
My vacation this summer was cut short by a car accident in Gualala, on the coast of Mendocino. I totaled our car, as well as the pick-up truck I hit. On the other hand, everyone in both cars walked away, with only minor injuries. To my great relief, I didn’t kill anyone. The side airbag—that likely saved me from serious bodily harm—had knocked my glasses off and into three unfixable pieces. My husband, Sam, and I were pretty shaken up.
And then we were surrounded by goodness and kindness. First, three different good Samaritans stopped to help us. One moved our car (with airbags deployed) off the road—because we couldn’t think straight enough in the moment to do so. Another, a veteran, jumped off his motorcycle and helped us move the detritus that had been the front of our car off the road. As I gushed gratitude, he told me that if he were still in the military, he would be doing this there. And then he said, everyone should stop to help others.
Yes. Of course, I thought, as I tucked that into my memory bank.
Then another person left to go to a stretch of road that had cell reception to call 911, because the accident happened in a cell dead zone. Within five minutes—five minutes in Gualala—the paramedics arrived. They were calm, helpful, and normalized our shock.
They were followed closely, in this large, barely populated area, by the volunteer fire department, who spread something atop the radiator fluid that had spilled out onto Highway 1.
When the Highway Patrol arrived, they, too, were kind and helpful. Our daughter drove the long and winding road from Petaluma up Route 1 to pick us up. And our insurance gave us a fair settlement to replace our car.
While we were waiting for Olya and the Highway Patrol, I had a moment of spiraling, as I blamed myself for the accident (it was my fault, but it was a mistake, not distracted driving, not drunk driving: I made an error in judging speed and distance)…But at exactly that moment, my app WeCroak tapped my wrist, reminding me, “Don’t forget: you’re going to die” as it does five random times every day. (It is based on the Bhutanese tradition that being reminded five times a day of our mortality makes us happier. And Bhutan is said to be the happiest nation in the world.) The quote, a random one that accompanies the tap on my wrist, was from Maya Angelou: “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” It was exactly what I needed at exactly the right moment. I chose to not be reduced by my mistake.
What was clear from the first moment of the accident onward was the power of gratitude.
We were alive.
I didn’t kill or seriously hurt anyone.
Three strangers came and helped.
The paramedics were good at their job and kindly helped us normalize what happened.
The volunteer fire department was helpful in many ways and kind.
The Highway Patrol was friendly and kind (I was aware of my white privilege—and wish that on everyone).
Olya was able to come pick us up.
As she told us, the car gave its life so we could live.
Another story: recently, a resident at St. Paul’s Towers, the retirement community where I serve as chaplain, fell flat on her face on her way to the dentist. Three people rushed to help her up and called 911. The paramedics arrived in a flash, and she could call to cancel her dentist appointment from the ambulance. She was overwhelmed by the kindness and goodness that held her.
I’d like to insert a note that none of the helpers asked us who we voted for in the election or what our position on abortion or the Mueller report was. They just helped. Because that’s what they do.
My family has a gratitude practice we have used for decades: once a day, we recount to each other three things we are grateful for on that specific day.
Last year, I added an additional practice: every night, as part of my bedtime prayer practice, I express thanks for everything I appreciate. I started it after I saw a meme that said, “Imagine if all you have tomorrow is what you gave thanks for today.” When I imagined this, I decided I should maybe spend some time going beyond my three things for the day, plus Sam, Olya, my cats, friends and job…—I imagine that I could wake up in the morning and Sam, Olya, the cats, and my friends and I would be standing naked and homeless, in the middle of the road…I now have such a long list that I often don’t finish before I’m sound asleep.
I could see that our gratitude practices had helped us hold it together that day. I am not sure that I would have been so grateful, so able to choose well even ten years ago.
I sent an email to the fire department and to the paramedic district, thanking the people who helped us, and received a lovely response—that I had made the director’s day and he looked forward to sharing it with his board and with the named paramedics…
Which leads to another story—at St. Paul’s Towers, a resident had sent an email to our executive director and head of facilities, thanking them for keeping the building comfortable during the heat wave the previous week. When the resident was discussing it with the Executive Director, another resident overheard, frowned and offered, “Why thank them? They were just doing their job.”
I know most of you get where I am going with this—how much better to make someone’s day by noticing the good they’ve done—even when they are “just doing their jobs”—than to gloss over the gifts that those jobs do for us.
How much better to extend and accept gifts of kindness than keep track of whom has helped whom.
How much better to stop at an accident site, if it is safe to do so, than drive on.
Our very name—Jews—comes from the name of Judah, Leah and Jacob’s fourth son—it’s one of the forms of hoda’ah—to give thanks…The modeh ani, hodu l’Adonai—all come from the same root of being able to acknowledge what has been given us, to recognize that we really can’t do everything on our own, that we really don’t control our universe or our circumstances. Sometimes accidents happen, or test results are not good, or we lose our jobs, or it feels like the universe is conspiring against us in some other way. We, as Jews, are called, deep within our name, deep within our essence, to acknowledge the good we have, the good we have been given—even in those hard times.
But it’s not always easy.
So we are given practices (yet something else to be grateful for)… Early in the Talmud, the compendium of Jewish wisdom finally compiled about 1,500 years ago, the rabbis have a discussion about blessings and the prayer service. The question—during the morning prayer service, should we utter prayers of thanks first, or prayers of request? Which one?
The rabbis agreed that we should give thanks first, and then ask for what we need. My theory on this is that we ask for different things if we give thanks first. Once we remember the good in our lives, we might need different, or dare I say, fewer things.
I think it’s also about teaching us to practice practice practice gratitude. Let’s make sure we give thanks, even for the mundane things, and for the awesome experiences or gifts.
We have a tradition of saying 100 blessings a day—noticing 100 times during the day that goodness has come our way. We start our day with Modeh or Modah ani—I acknowledge before you—that you have given me my soul back and have faith in me… Traditional Jews manage the 100 just with the morning, afternoon and evening prayers—they total around 100. For us, it might take some creativity.
Let’s take a moment and notice all that we are grateful for—the relationships, the experiences, the service, the music, the art, the beauty, the community, the amenities we have. Let’s breathe in the gifts and breathe out the gratitude, breathe in the gifts, breathe out the gratitude.
An experiment[1] conducted by Fred Bryant at the University of Chicago shows the importance of looking for the good. He tasked three groups of walkers a 20 minute walk daily, each with a different focus. He asked the first group to notice only the good things along their way—sunshine, flowers, children playing. He charged the second group to notice only the negative—litter, frowning people, graffiti. He instructed the third group to just exercise for exercise’s sake. I think, not surprisingly, the first group, focusing only on the good, measured as happier at the end of the week than when they started. The second group, focusing on the negative, were less happy than when the week had started, and the third group saw little change. The point is, said researcher Bryant, that “you see what you look for. And you can train yourself to attend to the joy out there waiting to be had, instead of passively waiting for it to come to you.”[2]
On the other hand, I am NOT suggesting that you practice what has been called “toxic positivity”—where you deny pain or don’t allow people to express their own. There are moments to strengthen our gratitude muscle and moments to practice compassion.
I recognize that we live in a time where being grateful for what we have and practicing the art of looking for the good can seem heartless, can seem to ask us to ignore the genuine suffering and pain that is happening all around us. That’s also not what I’m suggesting. At all. Indeed, I think that when we recognize the good that we have—that long list that puts me to sleep at night, for instance—we are also called upon to be the helpers for others. Called upon to witness and stand up.
This is also built into our tradition: one way to express thanks for an act of kindness is to say, “Tizkeh l’mitzvot”—literally “may you merit mitzvot”—from the Mishnah, Pirkei Avot 4:2:
Ben Azzai teaches,
Race to do even a small kindness…
[Because] One kindness leads to another kindness…
[And] The consequence of kindness is more kindness…
So, when we thank someone with a blessing that they might do more acts of kindness—we are promoting more kindness in the world. I imagine the whole world having the experience I had after my accident—the feeling of being held until I felt safe again, feeling I was cared for despite my having caused an accident, feeling loved in a broader sense than I have ever felt. The paramedics were just doing their jobs, the veteran was doing what came naturally to him, the person who lived on the street of the accident just did what to her was the obvious thing to do, maybe even the only thing to do.
And—performing acts of kindness—for many people—makes us feel better about ourselves—indeed makes us happier. A man at St. Paul’s told me about a BART ride he took from Oakland to San Francisco. He rode in the same car as a young man who was apparently having hallucinations and making disturbing sounds…The resident looked him in the eye and offered him his seat. The young man did not accept, but—he did calm down considerably. The resident felt good about himself for having helped.
And one of my favorite examples of this feeling is from a study of hospital housekeeping staff.[3] Housekeepers who think of their job as only about doing specific tasks on a checklist—“boring and meaningless”—are significantly less happy at work than those who see their jobs as making the environment easier for the nurses and for the patients. Those folks find greater happiness in doing their jobs.
As Abraham Joshua Heschel commented—when I was young I admired smart people; now that I am old, I admire kind people.
In these troubled times, when the world seems so harsh and chaotic and broken, when we are faced with trauma, or other pain, kindness from strangers, from loved ones, from our leaders, can make a huge difference.
Feeling gratitude for the good we receive, noticing the good that comes our way, can also help us to not reduce ourselves when we are faced with brokenness.
May we all be able to notice the little things, and the jobs well done, and the helpers, and the beauty, and the joy…all the opportunities for gratitude…And may they lead us all to more acts of kindness toward others, and more acts and more…
[1] Gallagher, Winifred. Rapt (p. 214). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[2] Ibid., p. 215.
[3] Ben-Shahar, Tal. Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment (p. 106). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.
And then we were surrounded by goodness and kindness. First, three different good Samaritans stopped to help us. One moved our car (with airbags deployed) off the road—because we couldn’t think straight enough in the moment to do so. Another, a veteran, jumped off his motorcycle and helped us move the detritus that had been the front of our car off the road. As I gushed gratitude, he told me that if he were still in the military, he would be doing this there. And then he said, everyone should stop to help others. Yes. Of course, I thought, as I tucked that into my memory bank. Then another person left to go to a stretch of road that had cell reception to call 911, because the accident happened in a cell dead zone. Within five minutes—five minutes in Gualala—the paramedics arrived. They were calm, helpful, and normalized our shock. They were followed closely, in this large, barely populated area, by the volunteer fire department, who spread something atop the radiator fluid that had spilled out onto Highway 1. When the Highway Patrol arrived, they, too, were kind and helpful. Our daughter drove the long and winding road from Petaluma up Route 1 to pick us up. And our insurance gave us a fair settlement to replace our car.
While we were waiting for Olya and the Highway Patrol, I had a moment of spiraling, as I blamed myself for the accident (it was my fault, but it was a mistake, not distracted driving, not drunk driving: I made an error in judging speed and distance)…But at exactly that moment, my app WeCroak tapped my wrist, reminding me, “Don’t forget: you’re going to die” as it does five random times every day. (It is based on the Bhutanese tradition that being reminded five times a day of our mortality makes us happier. And Bhutan is said to be the happiest nation in the world.) The quote, a random one that accompanies the tap on my wrist, was from Maya Angelou: “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” It was exactly what I needed at exactly the right moment. I chose to not be reduced by my mistake.
What was clear from the first moment of the accident onward was the power of gratitude.
We were alive.
I didn’t kill or seriously hurt anyone.
Three strangers came and helped.
The paramedics were good at their job and kindly helped us normalize what happened.
The volunteer fire department was helpful in many ways and kind.
The Highway Patrol was friendly and kind (I was aware of my white privilege—and wish that on everyone).
Olya was able to come pick us up.
As she told us, the car gave its life so we could live.
Another story: recently, a resident at St. Paul’s Towers, the retirement community where I serve as chaplain, fell flat on her face on her way to the dentist. Three people rushed to help her up and called 911. The paramedics arrived in a flash, and she could call to cancel her dentist appointment from the ambulance. She was overwhelmed by the kindness and goodness that held her.
My family has a gratitude practice we have used for decades: once a day, we recount to each other three things we are grateful for on that specific day.
Last year, I added an additional practice: every night, as part of my bedtime prayer practice, I express thanks for everything I appreciate. I started it after I saw a meme that said, “Imagine if all you have tomorrow is what you gave thanks for today.” When I imagined this, I decided I should maybe spend some time going beyond my three things for the day, plus Sam, Olya, my cats, friends and job…—I imagine that I could wake up in the morning and Sam, Olya, the cats, and my friends and I would be standing naked and homeless, in the middle of the road…I now have such a long list that I often don’t finish before I’m sound asleep.
I could see that our gratitude practices had helped us hold it together that day. I am not sure that I would have been so grateful, so able to choose well even ten years ago.
I sent an email to the fire department and to the paramedic district, thanking the people who helped us, and received a lovely response—that I had made the director’s day and he looked forward to sharing it with his board and with the named paramedics…
Which leads to another story—at St. Paul’s Towers, a resident had sent an email to our executive director and head of facilities, thanking them for keeping the building temperate during the heat wave the previous week. When the resident was discussing it with the Executive Director, another resident overheard, frowned and offered, “Why thank them? They were just doing their job.”
I know most of you get where I am going with this—how much better to make someone’s day by noticing the good they’ve done—even when they are “just doing their jobs”—than to gloss over the gifts that those jobs do for us.
How much better to extend and accept gifts of kindness than keep track of whom has helped whom.
How much better to stop at an accident site, if it is safe to do so, than drive on.
Our very name—Jews—comes from the name of Judah, Leah and Jacob’s fourth son—it’s one of the forms of hoda’ah—to give thanks…The modeh ani, hodu l’Adonai—all come from the same root of being able to acknowledge what has been given us, to recognize that we really can’t do everything on our own, that we really don’t control our universe or our circumstances. Sometimes accidents happen, or test results are not good, or we lose our jobs, or it feels like the universe is conspiring against us in some other way. We, as Jews, are called, deep within our name, deep within our essence, to acknowledge the good we have, the good we have been given—even in those hard times.
But it’s not always easy.
So we are given practices (yet something else to be grateful for)… Early in the Talmud, the compendium of Jewish wisdom finally compiled about 1,500 years ago, the rabbis have a discussion about blessings and the prayer service. The question—during the morning prayer service, should we utter prayers of thanks first, or prayers of request? Which one?
The rabbis agreed that we should give thanks first, and then ask for what we need. My theory on this is that we ask for different things if we give thanks first. Once we remember the good in our lives, we might need different, or dare I say, fewer things.
I think it’s also about teaching us to practice practice practice gratitude. Let’s make sure we give thanks, even for the mundane things, and for the awesome experiences or gifts.
We have a tradition of saying 100 blessings a day—noticing 100 times during the day that goodness has come our way. We start our day with Modeh or Modah ani—I acknowledge before you—that you have given me my soul back and have faith in me… Traditional Jews manage the 100 just with the morning, afternoon and evening prayers—they total around 100. For us, it might take some creativity.
Let’s take a moment and notice all that we are grateful for—the relationships, the experiences, the service, the music, the art, the beauty, the community, the amenities we have. Let’s breathe in the gifts and breathe out the gratitude, breathe in the gifts, breathe out the gratitude.
An experiment[1] conducted by Fred Bryant at the University of Chicago shows the importance of looking for the good. He tasked three groups of walkers a 20 minute walk daily, each with a different focus. He asked the first group to notice only the good things along their way—sunshine, flowers, children playing. He charged the second group to notice only the negative—litter, frowning people, graffiti. He instructed the third group to just exercise for exercise’s sake. I think, not surprisingly, the first group, focusing only on the good, measured as happier at the end of the week than when they started. The second group, focusing on the negative, were less happy than when the week had started, and the third group saw little change. The point is, said researcher Bryant, that “you see what you look for. And you can train yourself to attend to the joy out there waiting to be had, instead of passively waiting for it to come to you.”[2]
On the other hand, I am NOT suggesting that you practice what has been called “toxic positivity”—where you deny pain or don’t allow people to express their own. There are moments to strengthen our gratitude muscle and moments to practice compassion.
Another way our tradition teaches us to express thanks for an act of kindness is to say, “Tizkeh l’mitzvot”—literally “may you merit mitzvot”—from the Mishnah, Pirkei Avot 4:2:
Ben Azzai teaches,
Race to do even a small kindness…
[Because] One kindness leads to another kindness…
[And] The consequence of kindness is more kindness…
So, when we thank someone with a blessing that they might do more acts of kindness—we are promoting more kindness in the world. I imagine the whole world having the experience I had after my accident—the feeling of being held until I felt safe again, feeling I was cared for despite my having caused an accident, feeling loved in a broader sense than I have ever felt. The paramedics were just doing their jobs, the veteran was doing what came naturally to him, the person who lived on the street of the accident just did what to her was the obvious thing to do, maybe even the only thing to do.
And—performing acts of kindness—for many people—makes us feel better about ourselves—indeed makes us happier. A man at St. Paul’s told me about a BART ride he took from Oakland to San Francisco. He rode in the same car as a young man who was apparently having hallucinations and making disturbing sounds…The resident looked him in the eye and offered him his seat. The young man did not accept, but—he did calm down considerably. The resident felt good about himself for having helped.
And one of my favorite examples of this feeling is from a study of hospital housekeeping staff.[3] Housekeepers who think of their job as only about doing specific tasks on a checklist—“boring and meaningless”—are significantly less happy at work than those who see their jobs as making the environment easier for the nurses and for the patients. Those folks find greater happiness in doing their jobs.
As Abraham Joshua Heschel commented—when I was young I admired smart people; now that I am old, I admire kind people.
In these troubled times, when the world seems so harsh and chaotic and broken, when we are faced with trauma, or other pain, kindness from strangers, from loved ones, from our leaders, can make a huge difference.
Feeling gratitude for the good we receive, noticing the good that comes our way, can also help us to not reduce ourselves when we are faced with brokenness.
May we all be able to notice the little things, and the jobs well done, and the helpers, and the beauty, and the joy…all the opportunities for gratitude…And may they lead us all to more acts of kindness toward others, and more acts and more…
[1] Gallagher, Winifred. Rapt (p. 214). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[2] Ibid., p. 215.
[3] Ben-Shahar, Tal. Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment (p. 106). McGraw-Hill Education. Kindle Edition.
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