A beautiful photo of students’ scholar pins at the 2015 Scholarship Celebration event.

It is something we do ritually at major moments in our lives—when we graduate from college, receive wedding gifts or career awards, in eulogies, or whenever others fete us in some manner.

We pause at these events and give thanks for the aid that others have given us.

These are almost always happy events, bittersweet or sad only if we say our thank you’s “too late” for the right people to hear them. We should honor those that give goodness to others and appreciate their gifts and the difference those gifts make in our lives. So let us all right now, say thank you.

I had the recent opportunity to appreciate many of the people who helped shape my own career and life.

 
A woman who polished rocks and took an interest in me at my elementary science fair. A woman who worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls translation. A woman who taught me the power of food and nutrition. A man who taught me philosophy. Another who taught me systems thinking. And connecting all of them, a variety of donors who helped me accomplish an education that gave me the career I’ve enjoyed to this moment. To all of them I am deeply grateful.

But gratitude is a quality, not to be reserved for special occasions. Gratitude is the quality of being grateful, a willing partner to improve our lived experience every day. If you find gratitude in your heart and wear it on your lips, if you pass it on to others, you cannot help but feel joy. Why save that for a rainy day? Why not welcome it every morning, share it every day? What better way to be thankful? What better way to “pay it forward?”

Gratitude is the opposite of greed. Greed is lonely, miserly. Gratitude is social and generous. Greed is cold, quick, and impulsive. Gratitude is warm, steady, and trustworthy. Gratitude is also patient. She waits through our busy forgetfulness until something pulls us up sharp, makes us remember, pulls at our heart, and then we embrace gratitude again. That happened to me recently. I had some problems with my eyes and became ever more grateful for my eyesight, to see color and surfaces, the wind move the leaves, the bubbling of soup, the shine on a piece of pottery, the slick of a water puddle, the gleam of a new car passing by.

There is so much to be grateful for!

Most of all though, we are grateful for the people who make a difference in our personal lives. Our parents and family and lovers, yes, but a very special gratitude is reserved for the volunteers in our lives, the quiet donors who gave a piece of themselves to you without you even knowing, the scholarship donors.

I can think of no finer gift than the gift of an education. Its value and quality lasts forever and impacts the recipients in countless ways, opening doors and opportunities across a life span. Please join me in thanking these special people, our donors, who gave for our students’ sakes.