Living in Gratitude

Last Friday we held our annual Harvest Fair, which again was a tremendous success. Due to the efforts of our amazing parent volunteers and primary grades science teacher Tina Poles, we raised over $1,800 to benefit the Redwood Empire Food Bank Megan Furth Harvest Pantry. At this time of year, when we celebrate the harvest, we are expressing our gratefulness for a season of growth and the fruits of our labor. We remind ourselves of the significance of our connection to the land and honor how it sustains us. I know I experience similar feelings during our annual giving pledge drive about our community’s support, our connections to each other, and how these sustain us and our children’s learning.

Last fall during the harvest and pledge drive, I shared a film entitled Nature. Beauty. Gratitude. Originally played at TEDxSanFrancisco in 2011, this short about the power of living a life of gratitude by filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg has since had over 2.5 million views on the TED website alone. What resonated with people who spoke to me after that Assembly was more than Mr. Schwartzberg’s beautiful time lapse photography. It was the narrator’s words of finding happiness through the practice of gratefulness. The narrator was Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast and, I suspect based on that short film’s success, Brother David was invited to speak at TED Global last year.

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Brother David asks us to imagine living our lives from a place of gratefulness for each day, each moment that is given to us. And how that practice is the source of great happiness, the desire for which is something common to every person across our globe. He suggests that for truly happy people, regardless of the circumstances they face, this practice is intentional, and we can learn much from thinking about why this is.

At Assembly I shared a brief clip from Brother David’s TED Talk and invited students to watch the remainder of his thoughts with their families this week (perhaps one of the days there isn’t a baseball game on). As we sat in silence together, I asked attendees to reflect on one of his ideas and to consider how they might practice gratefulness for the opportunities in their own lives.

There are many things for which we cannot be grateful, but there is no moment for which we cannot be grateful, because in every moment, even difficult ones, we have the opportunity.

At your family’s dinners this week, talk about how the practice of gratefulness might play a role in your lives and what happiness means to each of you. Imagine what might occur if we all lived life from this point of view.

Brad Weaver, Ed.D