President Garland: Finding Daily Thankfulness

In Shawn Achor’s TED Talk, he lists five exercises to do for 21 days in a row as the happy secret contributing to better work. The first is to list each day three new things for which one is grateful.

In this season of Thanksgiving, I thought Helen Keller’s list of three things was most moving and humbling. She became blind and deaf from an illness at 19 months of age. She could not see; she could not hear. Nevertheless, she was thankful. She wrote in her autobiography: “For three things I thank God every day of my life: thanks that he vouchsafed me knowledge of His Works; deep thanks that He has set in my darkness the lamp of faith; deep deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to—a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song.” She claimed that so much had been given to her, she had no time to think about what had been denied her.

As a student once said to me, “Why is it that I can effortlessly find things to complain about while being ungrateful for that with which I have been blessed?”

Surely, we can find three things to give thanks for each day.

Thankfully,

David Garland
Interim President