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30 Days to a better man
him and their job. On the flip side, nothing can buoy up our relationships
quite like gratitude. A warm word of appreciation can instantly thaw the
ice between people.
How often do we thank our wives for taking care of those little errands
we forgot to do? How often do we thank our girlfriends for how thoughtful
they are? When was the last time we thanked our co-workers for helping us
get a project ready or our friend for being there to help us move?
We often assume that people either get thanks from other people or
that they just somehow know how grateful we are for what they do. We
are usually wrong on both counts. Here’s another old story that illustrates
this well:
A group of friends in the midst of an after-dinner conversation started talking
about what they had to be thankful for. One of the group said, “Well I,
for one, am grateful to Mrs. Wendt, an old school teacher who, 30 years ago
in a little West Virginia town, went out of her way to introduce me to the
works of the poet, Tennyson.” “And does this Mrs. Wendt know that she
made that contribution to your life?” someone put in. “I’m afraid she doesn’t.
I have been careless and have never, in all these years, told her either face-toface
or by letter.” “Then why don’t you write her?”
Now, all this is very poignant to me, because Mrs. Wendt was my teacher
and I was the fellow who hadn’t written. That very evening, I tried to atone.
On the chance that Mrs. Wendt might still be living, I sat down and wrote
her what I call a Thanksgiving letter. This is the handwritten note I had in
return. It began:
“My Dear Willie-
I am now an old lady in my 80s, living alone in a small room, cooking my
own meals, lonely and seemingly like the last leaf of fall left behind. You will
be interested to know, Willie, that I taught school for 50 years and, in all that
time, yours is the first note of appreciation I ever received. It came on a blue,
cold morning, and it cheered my lonely old heart as nothing has cheered me
in many years.”
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