A Simple Act of Gratitude

Article by Wendy McCance

I was walking through Target with my daughter today.  We were on a mission to get her new headphones for her laptop along with a few other odds and ends for the house.  We were walking around quite leisurely checking out whatever caught our eyes when I wanted to stop and flip through a row of magazines.  As soon as I stepped in the aisle, I was drawn in by the paperback books instead of the magazines I had intended on looking at.  I am quite an avid reader and noticed that many of the books on display were the very same books that were sitting on my bookshelf at home.

As I walked down the aisle, a book jumped out at me and although the cover was unassuming, it had caught my eye.  The title of the book was, A Simple Act of Gratitude by John Kralik.  The back cover describes the book as being about an attorney who is struggling through a difficult time in his life and how he aims to put his life in perspective.  His plan is to write 365 thank you notes of gratitude to help get through his difficult time.  Through this journey, his perspective of his life begins to evolve as his plan gets underway.  I knew instantly that I needed to read this book.  It struck me how perfect this book was for me considering that I was looking for that happiness.

I loved the hook of this book.  The idea that through thank you notes this man could slowly get a new lease on a life that seemed horribly out of control with the bad aspects of life suffocating the good.  Needless to say, it was a good read.  I finished the book in one evening and felt enlightened by the message of the book.  The books popular theme, which was to look for the simple pleasures and feel grateful for the good in your life still got to me because of the way in which it was accomplished.

We have all heard this advice a million times over, but it’s the way in which to accomplish this, particularly when you are at such a low place in your life that really stuck.  If you are facing adversity and having a hard time moving out of what can sometimes feel like debilitating depression, I highly recommend this book.  By the end of the book, I had felt as though a weight I didn’t know was there had been lifted.