Counting My Blessings

The author counting his blessings upon the isle of Rousay in the Orkney Islands

Professor Joe Goldblatt

Today is American Thanksgiving Day. It is a day when we Americans throughout the world count our blessings. The older I become, the more blessings I seem to enjoy.

One year during Thanksgiving I developed the custom of calling the customers of my events business and thanking them for their trade. When I made the first call I received a recorded message stating “Your long distance calls have been disconnected due to non payment of the bill.” I was both surprised and shocked. I had recently sold my successful event manafement business to a larger concern and I thought things were going well. I asked the secretary what was the problem with our phone service and she dryly said “Cash flow problems. The owner did not pay the phone bill.”

Undaunted, I used my personal telephone to call my customers and thank them for their trade. A few days later I learned that the company was closing and that I would never be paid the million dollars the owner had promised when he purchased the business.

However, within one year I had been accepted to a top post graduate programme to study tourism and within three years I had earned my doctoral degree. As a result of earning these new qualifications, the third chapter of my career as a university professor was launched. It also ushered in the happiest days of my nearly 50 year career. And I was now grateful for this new opportunity.

Gratitude is often a mysterious opportunity. Each week I visit a friend who suffered a stroke several years ago. He is paralyzed on the right side of his body. However, he demonstrates such courage desipite the pain and frustration along with the fear of frequently falling that he experiences most every day. We have become good friends and I greatly admire him.

A few months ago I discovered a play that premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe entitled Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan MacMillan. The play is about a boy who tries to comfort his suicidal mother by telling her about all the good things in life. The audience also gets involved by reading out loud hundreds of good things in life.

I decided to use this approach with my friend and I created a box of ‘gratitudes’ that we could reach into when needed to share our positive feelings with one another. Week after week we talk about our gratitude for our wives, our children, our careers, our holidays, and many other thingsthat we often take for granted. This sharing of personal gratitudes helps cheer us up, especially, during the dark, cold winter Scottish months.

Perhaps the Irving Berlin song that was introduced in the film White Christmas best exemplifies this idea of appreciating all we have to be grateful for. In his song Count Your Blessings, Berlin seems to have found the secret cure for insomina.

Irving Berlin (1888 – 1989)

I suppose that as I count my blessings upon this American Thanksgiving Day I shall also have a good sleep and if and when I awake, I shall begin to count my many blessings again. After all, life itself is a blessing and I plan to use the rest of my days to count count every single one.

Professor Joe Goldblatt is Emeritus Professor of Planned Events at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, Scotland. His views are his own. To learn more about his views visit www.joegoldblatt.scot