When I was 22, I went to Israel to study Hebrew and learn about the country. I had graduated in August from San Francisco State and got a job at the SF Civic Center for a legal newspaper. I saved as much as I could for my Israel adventure.
In cold, foggy, or rainy weather my coworker and I often ate lunch at a little cafe run by some Chinese men. It was the kind of place where strangers shared tables, and where you could bring a sack lunch if you purchased something additional at the cafeteria counter.
A few weeks after my coworker quit, the cafeteria line server asked me where my “little friend” was; he was concerned that they had somehow offended her. When I explained that she had quit and no longer worked in the area he said, “We get used to seeing people, and then they leave and we never know what happened.”
With this in mind, on my last day of work before I was leaving for Israel I said to him, “I want to thank you and your coworkers for this cafeteria, and to let you know how much I have enjoyed eating here. The food is great and the atmosphere is terrific. But today is my last day, and I wanted you to know I’ll miss you all.”
A few minutes later, an older man came from the kitchen to my table. Clasping his hands under his apron, he bowed in an old-fashioned way and said, “Little missy be very, very careful. Many bad mans in world, want come to America. Bad mans trick little ladies, get visas. Little missy be very, very careful.”
I thanked him, but in my mind I thought, “I’m a college graduate, a smart person. This won’t happen to me.”
But things change. My mother decided to sell her house and move to a place I’d never been, my father got deeply involved with a gold-digger—I met her before I left; she appeared to be an alcoholic who was dragging Dad down that path—and my newly married brother (who had been a great correspondent when he had gone to Europe a few summers earlier) wrote me exactly zero letters. I felt abandoned by my family. I was alone in a strange country where I knew no one.
The inevitable happened to this young, lonely American woman: I fell prey to a charmer who wanted an easy green card. The abuse started immediately after the marriage, and five weeks in he threatened my life. As I lay on the bed following the attack, that Chinese restaurant owner popped into my head. “This is what he meant,” I realized. As soon as my husband was asleep, I took a few things and left, walking across Tel Aviv after midnight to my former landlady’s, where I knew I’d find shelter.
Had I stayed with that man, I am certain he would have killed me—perhaps not deliberately, but those fingers were only a centimeter or two away from doing the job that night. (For years I could not even put a scarf around my neck because even soft silk brought back the pressure of his fingers.) Women stay with abusive men for many reasons,1 and the statistics of abused wives staying with their abusers are frightening.2 Without my mind filled with that heavily accented voice and the sincere bows of respect that the Chinese cook had given me, I doubt I would have left so early in the marriage, and I am not at all sure I would have survived to leave on my own two feet.
Gratitude
Since then, gratitude has become important to me. When I became religiously observant, I discovered that a large part of the morning prayers—the ones that set us up for the day—express gratitude for all of God’s blessings, from the ability of our bodies to process air and food3 to the beauty of nature and the support of friends. But there are also many other moments.
Years ago, on my way to synagogue in Cambridge, MA after I returned from Israel, I passed a lovely garden. One day a woman was pulling weeds there, and I thanked her for the garden. From then on, almost very week we chatted about gardens and other inconsequential things as she worked in the lovely perimeter of her yard. Later I learned that my friend was Julia Child, the food goddess and TV star. I think she had enjoyed those moments with someone who saw her as a neighbor, not as a famous personality.
My now-ex-husband, whose home office fronted on the street, would listen for the rubbish truck just before Christmas and July 4th. When he heard it, he would run out and bring the driver a bottle of bourbon as a thank-you. After Ira moved out, I sometimes forgot to put the barrel out by the street. When I heard the truck I’d run out, but a few times I was a little late, and the driver had already moved to the house ahead of ours. But when I ran out, he ignored the rules and backed the truck up so he could collect my trash.
At a little kosher pizza place, the employees cleaned tables but expected customers to pick up their orders at the counter. Ira and I learned the names of the people behind the counter and always called them by name. We also always left a tip on the table. After awhile, they told us to sit down after ordering, and they would bring our orders to us. My friend, who had a shop in the same group of stores and had been their customer for years, was surprised that I got table service until she saw the tip. Gratitude on my part was returned by gratitude from those usually-invisible workers.
My present apartment is on a small path at the edge of a little plaza. Most people who use the main path that cuts through the plaza do not notice this path, and it used to be ignored by the city crew that keeps paths clean. Once I began thanking them for their work and for keeping the plaza tidy, it suddenly began being much cleaner, and the little path by my door began to be cleaned too. On the other hand, I have an acquaintance who told me that she hates how dirty the area in front of her home is, and how no matter how often she reprimands the city workers, it doesn’t improve. The answer, I would tell her if she asked, would be gratitude.
Gratitude can be expressed even in situations like hers, without lying. I would not say of a dirty place, “Thanks for your hard work.” But I would say, “I know you are working hard, but if you could manage to get that path over there cleaned too, I’d really be grateful.” And there’d be a 98% chance that when I went out next, they would have cleaned it.
The habit of gratitude
Creating a habit of gratitude was not difficult for me. One thing that helped me when I was in a very difficult situation was that my therapist suggested that every night I write down five things I was grateful for. He said, “Even if the day was dreadful, you can thank God for breathing, for having had supper (even if it wasn’t enough or wasn’t tasty), and so forth.”
After a few nights of writing “Thanks for keeping me alive, thanks for giving me food, thanks for giving me water, thanks for giving me clothes to wear, thanks for having a job to earn a living with,” I began looking for good things during the day so I’d have something new to write. And soon, even though the difficult situation didn’t resolve, I was noticing good things more often than bad.
Our world is full of bad things: evil people, good people doing and saying stupid and hurtful things, storms and more. But it is also full of good things: the Muslim Arab woman who helped lift my heavy grocery cart off the bus, the man who got the can I needed off the (to me unreachable) top shelf, the bright sun, the flashes of the iridescent, tiny Israeli Sun Birds as they flit through the trees.
By noticing the good things and thanking God for them, we show our appreciation. And by noticing and verbally appreciating things that other people do—even things they are paid to do--we are imitating God. Our generous words brighten people’s day, so they are more likely to be filled with good, positive feelings. In so doing, we are helping to bring peace to our homes and neighborhoods, and by extension to the world.
Wishing you a happy, healthy New Year.
We bless God before and after eating. After relieving ourselves, we thank God for the tubes and pipes within and out life that can only continue when those open and close properly. For an interesting article, see https://aish.com/the-bathroom-blessing-whisperer/
Wouldn't it be nice if Gratitude was taught in schools. I can imagine lots of fun Gratitude games in kindergarten.