Category Archives: #iamgrateful #iamthankful

A friend posed the below (a former boss/manager actually, thank you Joan Ochi). The message is powerful and precisely the humility and context we need these days. It reminds me of one of my favorite passages from The Art of Happiness. I feel like sometimes I can be too proud of what I have accomplished and not honest or forthright enough about all the people and institutions that made it possible.

#iamgrateful and #iamthankful for the reminders. This is a great way to enter the weekend and a message I want to reinforce with our kids over and over again.

From Joan:

One of my favorite passages, from a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King. In the wake of the horribly short-sighted decision made by our president yesterday, this seems especially relevant.”

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.

Did you ever stop to think that you can’t leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that’s handed to you by a Pacific islander.

You reach for a bar of soap, and that’s given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that’s poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that’s poured into your cup by a Chinese.

Or maybe you’re desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that’s poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that’s given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker.

And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half of the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.”