Gratitude

Yesterday morning, I was out in a field harvesting Swiss chard at New Earth Farm, a small organic farm in Virginia Beach where my wife and I belong to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) cooperative.

As I worked out in the field in the growing heat of midsummer, my creaky back and knees aching and sweat dripping down my nose as I stooped to chop the big, glossy green leaves with their long purple-pink and yellow stems, I began to reflect on how insulated I had been throughout my life from this kind of arduous but necessary farm labor--having grown up, like most Americans of my postwar generation, in the idle comforts of suburbia, where an abundance and variety of food was always as close as the refrigerator or the local supermarket. How much, that is, I had taken for granted the hard labor of all those who had provided the things I eat every day.

Looking more deeply, I tried to imagine what it would have been like to be a slave on a plantation, working like this from dawn till dusk every day in the hot, merciless sun, under the lash of a cruel and paranoid overseer, with no hope whatsoever of any other life for me or for my children. Here I had only worked about an hour, max, and I was already worn out!

And so later, as my fellow volunteers and I gratefully consumed a delicious and joyful breakfast of organic grits, raisins, almonds, and fresh-baked bread with tomato chutney spread on it, along with a delicious cup of fresh-brewed coffee, I started likewise reflecting on how many people had worked hard to provide each of these delights: the corn farmers, the grape growers, the almond growers, the wheat farmers, the processors, the retailers, and even, of course, the cook--my delightful friend Kathleen, who herself had arisen early to cook and lay out this delicious spread for us while we harvested, cleaned, and bundled the various fresh vegetables that would go to this week's allotment for the CSA members.

Driving home later that day, I continued in this line of thought, reflecting on the auto workers on assembly lines to whom I owed my car, the construction workers, engineers and planners who had provided the interstate (however badly designed this particular stretch is!), and--most notably, the musicians who had trained for long hours in practice rooms to master the instruments that played the beautiful classical music I was listening to on WHRO...

All this led to a rather delightful discovery: The more I reflected, with gratitude, on the hard work of all who provided me with these goods--the food, the car, the highway, the music--the more I enjoyed each of them! Even the inevitable, sludgy 6-mile traffic back-up at the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel failed to dampen my joy. I just kept listening to the music, and visualizing each of the players in turn, earnestly doing their best to give life to the score in accordance with their long lifetimes of training--and the long, slow, stop-and-go slog through the tunnel was over before I knew it.

So--what? Simply that gratitude = joy. It's that simple, and wondrous. The more we contemplate, with gratitude, all the work others have done, all the suffering others have endured, to provide what we have in any given present moment, the more we savor that moment itself. Try it some time.

I am reminded of Huston Smith's beautiful summary of the essentials of Buddhist practice:

Infinite gratitude for the past,

Infinite service to the present,

and Infinite responsibility for the future.