This morning after a friendly discussion, a dear fellow teacher of mine took her computer and wanted to go outside. I’m aware that because of the ventilation here and the fact that we store so much meat for all of the meals, that the air is not the best, but I was very pleased and appreciative that when she was leaving she made sure to let me know that she was not leaving to get away from me at all. Being rather struck with the consideration of her gesture, I felt it necessary to thank her, so that she knew I noticed and appreciated it. In fact, I have to say that the current group of teachers I work with are all a very appreciative group of people–we like to help each other out and thank each other often, and we are all pretty generous with either our help or our wit, as the situation may require.

I have made it a point to try to be more open with my gratitude. This has not always been the case. There have been numerous entirely avoidable fights that I have had with others simply because they did favors and felt that I did not appreciate them, which was not the case. Because of shyness, or pride, or whatever it was, I was simply not comfortable in expressing the gratitude I felt toward others, and I deeply regret that they took my awkward silence for a lack of appreciation. As someone who is very concerned about others, and who does my best to be thoughtful, it is a bit hurtful to be thought of as unobservant and uncaring simply because I do not express my feelings with the same felicity and openness that I express my thoughts and opinions.

This has long bothered me, but one must develop the habit of showing gratitude long after one feels gratitude. It is important to show gratitude to others because others cannot read our minds and hearts. They do not know our concern or care in them unless we make it obvious, and they will not be inclined to behave graciously towards us unless they know that we appreciate what they do and respect the effort that they have put forth on our behalf. By showing ourselves to be gracious and appreciative we help encourage other people to behave graciously and politely, and this world could use all the politeness and generosity it can get, and a lot more as well.

Most of our problems do not exist on the level of feeling, but rather on the level of communication. Because we are miserably poor mind readers, no matter how sincerely we try, we are often unable to discern the motives and reasons why people act the way they do. We confuse shyness with pride and make many more serious errors. Because we do not come to terms we do not know where we stand with others, and so we suffer misery and anxiety while we delicately try to communicate ourselves to others in a way that we hope will elicit the answers we desire from them. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it does not. But if we desire other people to know how much we appreciate what they do for us, we need to let them know, for we cannot expect them to know otherwise unless we tell them.