Fill Their Cup

For week thirty-two of our fifty week challenge, our prompt was to say thanks to the person who organizes and runs the private group. I decided to do a montage of the word thanks from multiple languages, and include in small black letter the things about the group for which I am thankful. I decides to only use shades of purple for the piece.

This is not the piece I had in my mind, yet once I started it grew beyond my control. I kept adding and adding until all the blanks spaces were no longer. The process reminded me that all too often we find ourselves giving thanks for things that we did not expect. A friendship in a peculiar place, a gift or lesson from an unlikely sources, even a kind word or act of kindness we never saw coming. If we let these moments pass without giving thanks we have lost an opportunity to grow the realm of thankfulness in this world.

There is so much terror, sadness, hate, fear and people without in this world that it seems selfish and lazy not to be thankful for things when they arrive at our door. For some generations a text message seems to suffice, for others they send an email. I am of the generation that likes sending thank you notes. I know how it feels when an actual envelope addressed to me arrives in my mailbox, handwritten with my name at the top. It is as if all those moments when I thanked others arrived for me as a payback AND to remind me that of all the ways there are to build a relationships, a thank you note is one of the best.

We all need to give and receives thanks for our efforts, our kindness, our input and our abilities to do things well. If all that goes unacknowledged eventually we begin to believe that it doesn’t matter. That narly voice in our head spreads the lies that people don’t care and what we do is worthless, which of course is a recipe for anger, resentment and loneliness. So let today be the day you tell someone thanks for whatever, however or whoever they are in your life. Give them the gift of a thank you or a pat on the back, fill their cup so they then have something to give to others.