on giving thanks

RóISíN INGLE

THANK YOU. Thanks. Cheers. Thanks a million. Thanks. Sometimes, when I take the bus I don’t bother sitting down. I just stand near the driver and listen. When the bus screeches to a stop I get a kick from listening to the litany of thanks offered to the man – it’s usually a man – who sits staring straight ahead, hands resting on the wheel, as though oblivious to the river of gratitude flowing his way.

Older men, pale-faced teenagers, parents with grumpy babies – it seems to me from my unscientific observation that close to 100 per cent of passengers take a moment to say thanks as they file past on their way to the next stop in their life. On any given day the driver must hear the thank-you chorus hundreds of times, in a country where showing appreciation to the bus driver is still customary. You’d wonder whether after a while he even hears it or if eventually the thank yous just blend with the noise of the traffic and the ticket machine.

Anyway, it does my heart good to hear. Thanks. Cheers. Thank you. Thanks. It might be just a ritual for some, ingrained in them from childhood like the act of blessing themselves when passing a church, so natural that it’s no longer even a conscious act. But even if the driver doesn’t register the words and even if the person saying thank you isn’t fully aware of what they’ve just said, I imagine these thank yous taking flight and reverberating around the bus and floating out on to the pavement, like a spray of furniture polish adding a golden sheen to the greyest of mornings.

According to Robert Emmons, a leading expert in the psychology of gratitude, a grateful life is good for you. His studies published in the book Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier show how being grateful on a regular basis can increase happiness by up to 25 per cent. In these times, this philosophy of “wanting what we have” – or to paraphrase a Sinéad O’Connor album, not wanting what we have not got – seems to make a perfect kind of sense.

Thank you. Cheers. Thanks a million. The Irish Hospice Foundation launched National Thank You Day last year and the second one takes place on November 25th. When I was asked to write a foreword to The Thank You Book that accompanied the project, I initially protested that I wasn’t qualified. As far as formalised thank yous go, I am more than a bit useless. It’s not that I don’t have a decent stash of thank you cards. I’ve got loads of them. Cheapo ones picked up in pound shops, designery ones at €5 a pop, cards that say go raibh maith agat and cards “left blank for your own message”. They sit there in the big white card box, a symbol of all the thank yous I want to say but just can’t seem to get around to.

It’s a more than usually pressing issue for me at the moment. I had a birthday recently and received lovely presents. In my mind’s eye, I see myself sitting down with my thank you card stash, classical music on in the background, candles burning, calligraphy marker in hand, to say thank you.

For the Alice in Wonderland mug. For the purse decorated with a huge R. For the scented candles and picture frames and the handbag and the wine and the book about The Smiths and the collage of photographs and the newspaper holder and the seascape and the plates so beautiful I want to hang them on the wall. I just want to take this opportunity to say thank you. Because the cards? They are, well, you know, in the post.

I am not much better at keeping up with my gratitude diary, in which I have great intentions of writing down five things a day for which I’m grateful. Even the Gratitude App on the iPhone hasn’t made me a daily practitioner. Yet.

And still I wrote the foreword to The Thank You Book because whatever else I might not be in my life, what I try to be and what I mostly am, is grateful. For so much. The usual stuff – family, friends, the roof over my head. The unexpected stuff – the kindness of strangers, flood solidarity, sparkler-induced nostalgia. But especially for the quiet moments in the day. The soul-stirring moments. The light on the Liffey or the beauty of the first winter frosts or toddler kisses or people saying thank you, thanks, cheers, thanks a million as they get off buses across the land. I may forget to record these moments but I notice them, drink them in, and in those fleeting seconds my gratitude knows no bounds.

All funds raised from The Thank You Book and cards goes to the Hospice Homecare for Children programme. For more see thankyouday.ie.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/magazine/2011/1112/1224307239869.html