The power of gratitute

My resident fellow send us the following article. I am grateful for so many things, including her. What are you grateful for?

THE POWER OF GRATITUDE

[THIRD Edition]

Boston Globe - Boston, Mass.

Author:	ELISSA ELY
Date:	Mar 28, 2003

ELISSA ELY is a psychiatrist.

MANY YEARS AGO, IN THE STAFF ROOM OF A HOSPITAL WHERE ALL CASES WERE CONFIDENTIAL YET ALL CONVERSATIONS WERE EASILY OVERHEARD, I LISTENED IN ON HALF A CONVERSATION. A psychiatric resident was on the phone. I knew little about him except that like all of us in training, he labored for the proper neutral expression considered an indication of therapeutic expertise. We all tried to look neutral back then; the staff room was full of level brows, no movements that might register on a Richter scale, and, in my five years there, not one fist pumped in the air.
The resident was known for taking on tough cases, angry and injurious patients whom others were pleased to pass on. His patients were regularly on the tops of bridges or else suing him. He was busier with their difficulties than the rest of us, and a certain admiration followed him for his durable accomplishments.
Durability took its toll. When he wasn't looking neutral, the doctor looked harried and slightly untidy; socks slid down, and his shirts came untucked from the weight of other lives on his shoulders. Though he never raised his voice, no one would have blamed him. We would have welcomed a little steam from his ears. It would have done him good.

On this morning, he was standing in the staff room with the phone receiver on his shoulder, holding one chart under his arm and leafing through another on the table. He had apparently just dialed the operator.

"Maintenance Department," he said, and while he waited he initialed a lab report. His voice had no time for chitchat. There was a bite of lunch on his tie.

"Hello, Maintenance? Is this the supervisor? This is Dr. X. I'm in Office 106. It's about the man who cleaned there last night."

My radar rose, and my admiration for his durable accomplishments began to sink. This phone call could have only one purpose. No matter how busy someone is, there is always time for dissatisfaction. He was calling to complain. He was going to report some imperfection left by the man who had cleaned Office 106 last night. I didn't want to hear it - though, of course, I continued to listen.

"I don't know the guy's name," he said. "But it looked like hell in there before, and it looks fabulous now. I wanted to pass on to you that he did a great job. Could you thank him for me?"
I would have tucked that lovely man's shirt in for him that second if I could have done it without breaking professional code. Giving thanks used to be standard - all human models came equipped with the capacity. Now it seems not to be a regular feature anymore; giving thanks has become heated front seats in luxury sedans.

Let us be clear.

Appreciation still exists, but it is mostly on a grander, more formal, full-screen scale - sky-high monuments and heroic testimonial dinners meant to knock us off our feet. Complaint is also easy to find these days (the very act of complaining is often confused with accomplishment). What is missing are the less spectacular thanks.

We're lessened by the loss of these little thanks, though we're mostly so busy that I wonder if anyone misses them. We're lessened because somehow a piece of eternity is put into place every time one is given - that is, thanks last forever. The janitor in Office 106, I'll put good money on it, will carry that moment with him into the next life. All of us who eavesdropped on the conversation will, too.
I once heard a senior psychiatrist say he had spent the entire hour of a session analyzing, as if in a chess match, whether or not to pass a tissue to a weeping patient. In the end, he didn't. He said it would have been too revealing. But this was the opposite. In a moment of unsolicited and slightly effortful gratitude, someone, by chance also a psychiatrist, exposed his disheveled and dear heart - and I, for one, would have trusted him with my soul after that. I have remembered his shirt long after I have forgotten his name. But it is never too late for gratitude.